That is honestly not that bad of a problem. Russia used to export a lot of refined products, so they loose the profits of doing the refining. They also have to sell for a lower then market price. Hence much less money for Russia and the global oil market does not have a huge supply problem.

The bigger problem are the lack of EU sanctions on Russian gas, especially LNG. Last year 17.5% of EUs LNG imports came from Russia. There is no reason for doing that more then three years after the full scale invasion. There also used to be imports via pipeline but Ukraine cut those.

Any order of new fighter jets takes about a decade as well. If you do not have them on order already, then why order new ones, when you could buy FCAS, which is a much better system instead.

FCAS is the answer, not Gripen or for that matter Eurofighter or Rafale.

It was really eye opening to look at the German reaction after the Netanyahu visit to Hungary. Scholz was happy that it happened and Baerbock spoke out against Hungary not arresting Netanyahu. Baerbocks Green Party will not be in the next government, but Scholz SPD will and Merz who is the coalition partner of the Scholz SPD has been even more pro Israel.

German democracy is really dead at this point. They are working hard on bringing in the AFD, with full support of the social democrats and conservatives. The Greens have failed to mount a decent defense and the left has been too divided to do shit.

The problem is moving to them. The lock in effects of AWS and the like are very real. However it is not going to get easier.

Facotries, houses and even companies can not be easily moved. Even something like a bank needs employees, with certain skills and those have value. You usually can not just move those to another country, unless something really drastic happens.

The other part is to organize. Something like the minimum company tax is a really good starting point. Most large countries have relativly high taxes anyway. The only reason tax heavens work is, because they have a tiny population and the few hundret jobs created by the paperwork are enough to support them. They could easily be bullied into having normal taxes.

Also keep in mind the EU has 1/5 of the global economy by itself.

and the bad part is that it is not just Gaza. The same beat downs happen with climate protests and even anti far right protests. Germany is moving to the right and it sucks badly.

Macron is talking about recognizing Israel, which Spain, Norway and Ireland have done as well in response to the war in Gaza. Nicaragua is suing Germany over weapon deliveries and Namibia has seized a ship to prevent weapon deliveries to Israel. Pretty much every country, which is not a close ally of the US is siding with Palestine on the issue and quite a few US allies have done things, which are rather anti Israel.

For the three EU citizens this is most likely illegal and they most likely will win in court. For the American Cooper Longbottom the situation is worse though.

That all would change if they get convicted though. The Berlin Senate claims they entered the university breaking open doors and threatening workers with axes. If they can prove that in court, then all of them could be kicked out of Germany. Well after being at least six months in prison that is.

The problem really boils down to a combination of NIMBYism and even more importantly lobbying. Telecom lobbied the German government to allow them to not upgrade to copper cables and upgrade those with better backend infrastructure as well. However that is always going to be worse then proper fiber.

For mobile in most countries the government issues licenses with built in fines, if certain coverage quality is not reached. Germany did not do this and the conservative government even repeated that mistake with 5G. The issue is that there are only three network providers and obviously upgrades cost money, which means less profits.

In this case the division means there are more then one ways to get to Europe. It also offers multiple different countries as options. The UK being Enlgish speaking and is culturally way closer to the US. Spain has the massive advantage of being Spanish speaking, which many Americans also speak at home. Many European countries like Germany and Italy offer citizenship by decent, which many Americans are eligable for. So in this case an advantage.

Also Europe is a much better place to live. A lot of people keep forgetting, but China is still a developing country. GDP per capita of China is about as high as that of Mexico. Another part less known is citizenship. The only way to get Chinese citizenship is by having Chinese family. Obviously that is not an option for most Americans.

No, they want Europe to pay for its own defense. That still would include buying US weapons.

Basically the US was the worlds police until recently. That gave them a lot of global influence mainyl the USD being the global currency. However it also required them to have a massive military and do things like supporting Ukraine, which obviously cost a lot. So they want other reasonable countries to pay for their own defense to keep their costs down. That however always meant still buying US weapons. The problem being that for some like the EU a working defense means less reliance on the US, hence less benefits.

tThe current ranking is:

So there are clearly a lot of fairly succesful alternatives to Amazon.

Nope. The SPD defending the AFD. Faeser stops the publication of a report, which would label the whole AFD as a party fighting the constitution. They actively work sending refugees to countries like Afghanistan, help to criminalize climate and Palestine activists and so forth.

The only left leaning thing they actively fought for in the last term in government was raising the minimum wage a bit. Everything else which was decent left leaning policy was brought through mainly by the Greens. Sometimes even the FDP had to rightly fight the insane policies of the SPD.

The budget, which adds up to about $245 billion, was announced at the National People’s Congress, the annual meeting of China’s legislature. The Pentagon and many experts say China’s total spending on defense may be 40% higher or more because of items included under other budgets.

That is for this years budget…

https://apnews.com/article/china-defense-budget-taiwan-4ac7cbdc7d5b889732cd55916ff7eb36

Chinas defense spending is now higher then EU defense spending was before Russia invaded.

China is up there too, with U.S. $236.1 billion in 2024.

There is for example no need for the EU to have a navy fleet that can operate independently for many months in the Pacific.

So Tahiti or New Caledonia do not need a navy to be protected. I am sure the French will be exited by having part of their country not being protected by the EU.

Germany did move gold from New York to Germany a decade ago. It is certainly possible, but obviously takes some time to do right. There might be other brothers after all.

Travel, but not settle or work. For Americans going back to the US for better salaries is quite realistic. For poorer countries retiring in your country of origin is very attractive.

Berlin has an IT english speaking expat bubble. However when you look at the share of Americans in Germany on a county or city level, Berlin has a lot, but it certainly is not alone. Military bases are also a thing, but pretty much only in the south.

Have they changen from 8 years to 5 for all? And do they still require non-EU people to give up their other citizenship if they want German citizenships?

Yes it was changed relativly recently.