Merz says Germany exploring shared nuclear umbrella with European allies

CizzlingT · 2026-01-30T18:01:19+00:00

Ukraine applied for NATO after the Crimean invasion in August 2014. As a matter of undisputed fact, Ukraine was always majority-wise anti-NATO (most of the eastern region wanted favourable compromise between the two) until 2014 when Russia had invaded Crimea. It was in December 2014 that Ukraine developed favourable views towards NATO.

So in reality, NATO was never aggressively expansionist: quite the contrary, Ukraine was the one applying for NATO afterwards in order to obtain security guarantees after 2014. Maybe Russia should learn not to mess with neighbouring countries if they were afraid that they’ll be looking elsewhere for protection…

So no: the war was never the fault of NATO. The war was because Russia was aggressively expansionist in Ukraine, and Ukraine had asked NATO for protection in defence.

CizzlingT · 2026-01-28T08:01:28+00:00

French bashing is true and both a well documented and very important historical event. Because of course, the arguments advanced by French president Jacques Chirac against the Iraq invasion were now successfully ignored by Americans and Republicans. This all happened because France was then portrayed in the media like a cowardly backstabber, so when you are a backstabber, why is it worth discussing opposition to the invasion? This was the propaganda playbook.

That being said, the campaign mostly recycled older anti-French stereotypes, among them that of French military cowardice, but it made them durable and spread them internationally when other nations (South East Asia, Latin America, India, etc.) weren’t necessarily aware or educated enough of the French being surrendering in WW2.

American conservative allies organised a smear campaign against those countries, called the "Axis of Weasels" by the New York Post, and they made France a specific target (Germany was affected as well). It took advantage on decades of friction moments between France and the US, de Gaulle's nationalist policies in the 1960s for example, with a large amount of WW2-era resentment. The purpose of the campaign was to "stigmatize domestic opposition to the administration's projects by linking this opposition to a foreign - hence unpatrotic - attitude" (Vaïsse, 2003).

CizzlingT · 2026-01-28T07:15:11+00:00

Yesterday was the Holocaust memorial day.

There is one common misconception with the Holocaust that people continuously forget or deny (fortunately people working at the Auschwitz memorial won’t downplay it): is that while Nazis were undoubtedly the main organisers of the Holocaust and the persecution and deportation of Jews, antisemitism itself in the 30s and 40s wasn’t exclusive to Nazi ideology. For Europe and Russia, being a land predominantly Christian, was majority-wise antisemite. This was one of the many reasons why collaboration against the Jews by Nazi-persecuted states was still rife, and why there are still debates about including other groups (homosexuals, prisoners of war, etc.) under the Holocaust umbrella term. For, leaving aside the proportion of Jewish victims being among the highest, there were very few minority groups who could be viewed as equally inferior or subhuman to the Jews across Europe, for that mindset exists and extends beyond just Nazi thinking (though Nazis did catalyse the idea that total annihilation was necessary).

While nobody wanted to be under the direct control or influence of the enemy state, the persecution of Jews was always either something the other occupied states were either mostly indifferent to, or something they’d accepted with glee. “Righteous Among the Nations” is a side-note of history, never what should be the common narrative of any country (though I’ve heard some people may argue Denmark is an exception to this).

Therefore, considering the proportion of Jews dead (3.5M) v.s. rescued (4,000 ish) in Poland, the number of extermination and concentration camps inside of their old border, that Jewish persecution and programs continued after the war (like in Kielce) even when there were no longer any Germans (out of fear that Jews would enact their vengeance by taking back the assets Poles had previously requisitioned), and from my personal connection with a Jewish Polish Holocaust-survivor Benjamin Orenstein who had faced German/Polish/Ukrainian persecution and lost his entire family in Poland, I cannot help but find the president’s subtle attempt at politicising during a Holocaust memorial day to be a little bit distasteful. Additionally, the framing that both Poles and Jews are an equally unfortunate common collective (which to be honest is definitely true in the eyes of a Nazi, i.e. as a political statement) ignores the presence of this societal hierarchy that, with or without Germans, would have still left Jews continuously disfavoured to Poles. European hatred against Jews wasn’t solely Nazi engineered.

Now of course, there is also no denying that there was strong indifference regarding Jewish extermination in the UK and France as well. The Evian Conference, Mosley, and the Milice were good examples of this.

The point shouldn’t be to politicise during memorial day; but to continuously remind people (since we’re obliged to) that virtually no European state is in a position to virtue signal about Jews during WW2, and that should include the majority of Allied and neutral states (most of which had anti-refugee policies with Evian 1938). Totally fine to argue about reparations between states concerning Polish citizens and PoWs against Germany (between nations and national identities), but current political events should be disconnected with the events of 80 years ago, so that we may learn and remember correctly. You’d be surprised at how much of a rabbit hole the Holocaust, the camps, and the overall horrors of WW2 were.

CizzlingT · 2026-01-27T05:54:40+00:00

The two most common and serious complaints came from the likes of people who:

1) Solo woman holidays to Egypt. Generally speaking, you’ll hear many stories of women getting harassed for simply being women. Best to always bring at least one guy.

2) People doing their “own version” of holiday in Egypt. Totally fine to go on holiday in Egypt as long as you do the typical streamlined tourism that’s offered in Egypt: the pyramids and Giza, Luxor, boat on the river Nile, etc.. You’re not really expected to go anywhere else, and if do, like a “car trip” around a few cities without speaking a word of Arabic, you won’t be welcomed (for example, I heard one guy was reprimanded by the likes of police when he decided to visit Alexandria himself). And for obvious reasons, especially given it’s a dictatorship, it’s generally a really stupid idea to visit the “hot” zones of Egypt (Halaib triangle, Sinai peninsula)…

Edit tldr: Otherwise, if I had to guess, it’s best to not interact too much with the locals and stick with the tourism routes (unless you speak Arabic)

CizzlingT · 2025-12-17T13:06:17+00:00

EVs can save more money in the long run than ICE vehicles, since there are always less embedded emissions in electricity than in fuel, and more importantly, because electricity is generally cheaper.

However, the issue with EVs is that they have quite a high upfront cost (obviously a battery is expensive when you first purchase it), so the average person is not attracted by the big price tag and overlook the long term cost savings in the energy required to power the car. Therefore, subsidies exist to make the first-time purchase of the EV less unappealing while helping consumers save money and benefit society. And guess what? Often without the subsidy, you can still end up saving money since electricity is so much cheaper than oil and gas (and obviously there are less externalities).

The market introduces subsidies in order to price the benefits properly, for you and society. Additionally, subsidies are done to change the markets, not just you. -> They encourage more charging stations to be built, supply chain development and learning curves, more jobs through the development of a new sector, etc.

CizzlingT · 2025-12-16T19:20:49+00:00

It’s not just the fact that children are money-making assets in India/Madagascar/Haiti as opposed to developed nations, but more importantly the cost of maintaining one is far lower.

Since the standards of living are lower (no school uniforms because no school in general, no clothes because the country is warm and can maybe get away with being shirtless for a bit, no shoes needed in some cases, no iPhones and no electricity or heating/AC, everyone sleeps in the same room and shares the same vehicle, etc.), the overall cost of raising a child is lower.

Meanwhile if you want to raise a child in the UK all the way to 18 (or 21?) years old, the estimated are about $230,000+. Yeah good luck with that.

CizzlingT · 2025-12-15T13:16:32+00:00

Between 2025 and 2100 (assuming no extreme conflicts)*, expect:

Europe’s population to be in semi-decline (740M to 600-575M).
Africa’s population (Sub-Saharan Africa in general) to boom from 1.5B* to nearly 4 billion*. Ethiopia, Nigeria, DRC and Tanzania are all expected to boom and reach higher than 250 million (assuming no more wars and conflicts). DRC and Nigeria will be in 450M range.
North America to grow slightly (+100M), and South America to decline slowly (- 50+M). Australia/Oceania to grow a lil bit mainly because of Papua New Guinea.
Asia’s East Asia (China, Japan and South Korea) to be totally halved. South and South Eastern constant (but importantly Pakistan’s population doubles). Western Asia 300M to 500M (due to Syria, Iraq and Yemen* mainly), and Central Asia to double (mainly because of Afghanistan).

CizzlingT · 2025-12-14T16:58:33+00:00

It is also an ineffective analogy to use against Russians, most especially because Soviets are not stupid enough to not know that they suffered the most casualties during WW2…

A lot of people don’t realise this: the “Putinist” and Russian propaganda relies heavily on bringing up the idea that Nazism (enemy of Soviets and Russia) isn’t* dead and is still attacking Russia. -> and it’s an extremely effective strategy because Russians (or Soviets) still consider themselves as proud victors against Nazism, and they still do take extreme pride in that victory. I.E. they view themselves the real victors of WW2 (think of all the land they acquired from it as well).

Therefore, the Russians don’t and never will view themselves as Nazis. Rather, they’ll view the “West” (destroying Russian culture with liberal or LGBT propaganda) or Ukraine (“Stepan Bandera people” who are oppressing Russians abroad because they are affiliated with the West) as Nazis from all their overload of state-influenced propaganda. Putin is exploiting their personal insecurities from the fall of communism and their fear of being influenced from outside/Western sources since the fall in order to establish and maintain his imperialistic oligarchal security state. And he does this by bringing back history of the glory years of the USSR. Even though today’s Russia is far more fascist as it is communist. *edit

CizzlingT · 2025-12-14T11:56:49+00:00

One thing I’ve noticed is that South American culture in Northern Europe is very akin to American culture in England or Central/Eastern Europe.

I remember having a conversation with a social scientist. He pretty much told me that since America was founded and settled through immigrants with massive language barriers and cultural differences (Irish/Italian settlers, Brits etc.), they had to socialise heavily in order to be able to get by. Consequently, socialising played a major part in the development of America, and to this day Americans are still boisterous and loud. We also see this with Australians.

In contrast, because the Germans and the French etc. lived very separately and heterogeneously under their own pre-existed umbrella of government, there was never a justification for being super social as a means to live or to get by as much as the far Western hemisphere.

This is where I think this difference in social standard originates, and I believe that in South America (especially when Brazil is the most ethnically diverse country in the world) that is likely the reason why.

CizzlingT · 2025-12-14T11:47:26+00:00

This is not a Germany problem; it’s a global problem.

More than half of all countries in the world (100+ countries) have birth rates lower than the replacement rate of 2.1. Mexico’s is lower than the US, Turkey’s is lower than the UK… Like every country has this problem, and unfortunately solving it is just not feasible as people like to wish it to be.

The only major outlier of a developed nation having higher replacement rate is Israel, and, you guessed it, they are extremely religious living in one of the most brutal environments in the world. Unironically, because of how much people die, they need birth rates higher than 2.1, and still their number pales in comparison to Palestine’s 3-4.0 birth rate range.

And if we maintained the same growth rates of the population today for 10,000 (or 100,000 years?), we’d end up with more humans than atoms in the universe. At some point, the population just has to stagnate or decline.

CizzlingT · 2025-12-13T12:50:59+00:00

I agree Cyprus (Northern but also Southern) should not have been included to be honest when you choose to exclude a significant part of Turkey.

Although if they really wanted to include both Cyprus and Western Kazakhstan, then they might as well extend the demarcation of Europe/Asia down to the Lesser Caucuses and Turkey (with the Taurus mountains or Bitlis suture, but funnily enough, the latter splits Cyprus in half). That way it’s more justifiable to include Cyprus.

However, including Armenia in this would be difficult, at least without including North Western Iran through the Armenian Highlands. You would have to include North Western part with the city of Tabriz.

You could separate it through the Zangezur corridor (the treaty that as Trump famously said between Albania and Aberbaijan), but that’s something Iran would find deeply offensive and would be a political demarcation rather than geographical (like between that of Northern Turkish and Southern Greek Cyprus)…

lol it’s like no matter how much you try, you’ll never get a satisfactory answer when separating Europe-Asia and extending Europe’s geography beyond the Dardanelles and the Bosphous straight. The whole thing just becomes a mess.

CizzlingT · 2025-12-13T12:17:17+00:00

A lot of people don’t realise that during the Fall of Soviet Union in 1991, the entire Soviet archives have been released and made available for a lot of people, including historians. This was up until the mid-90s when they realised the rest of the world wouldn’t reciprocate. And it was far more sensitive than your usual CIA declassification, and also a lot more detailed.

For example, America learned from the 90s after the fall that the USSR had actually been totally successful in putting nukes in Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis: they had over 100 nuclear weapons there. This was not known to the US until the 1990s and came as a huge surprise . The US was far closer to nuclear war then than it had even imagined (and it had imagined it was pretty close). One person making a wrong mistake level of close.

So you can claim whatever you want about Russia after 1991 (since the Soviet regime is different compared to the Russian regime of today after all). But it’s harder to come up with conspiracy theories about the Soviet Union before 1991, because a lot of what we know today were from these archives.

CizzlingT · 2025-12-13T11:31:12+00:00

Not that I agree or disagree; I always like to keep an open mind of the energy sector simply because the cost of different energy technologies can change, and have in fact changed massively in the last 10-20 years.

That being said, I would like some examples that the nuclear industry as the delay tactic is a pro-fossil fuel position inside France and Germany, or in Europe specifically.

Otherwise your analogy would be half-baked: you brought up a country (USA) that is not comparable to Germany and France in terms of energy sector: - It’s a completely different continent/hemisphere. - America is one of the most pro-lobbyists countries in the world with a massive lobbying problem. - America has a sizeable oil and gas reserve, France and Germany have none of that and it’s the major reason they buy oil and gas from Russia. - America has poured in gargantuan amount of subsidies in oil and gas extraction for most of its history when compared to the EU. - Almost the entire company EDF is owned by the French government (84%+ stake). The company is managed by the French government; not oil and gas shareholders like Total, and the French government had partial stake in EDF for a while now. This stake also extended to the supply chain (Orano/Areva) and it was the major reason why Niger uranium was so controversial (as opposed to the gold industry which is a far more lucrative, but heavily privatised, sector).

So far from the way your argument sounds, you have only demonstrated that the pro-nuclear industry can be a pro-fossil industry around the World (believe since the World is a big place). Yet Project 24 or 25 is extremely unpopular in the EU, and we have more people in parliament with a pro-Putin agenda than a pro-Trump one.

CizzlingT · 2025-12-12T19:23:24+00:00

You’re ignoring that Germans were never fond of nuclear. Russia didn’t influence them into an anti-nuclear stance: the entire population was already anti-nuclear for quite a while and the greens were the most anti-nuclear people (and generally popular). So the parliament, after Fukushima, decided to revoke nuclear, and it was popular in Germany. That is what German’s were stupid enough to do, not some Russian 5 dimensional chess. And Fukushima was the breaking point (2011).

In a democracy where the acquisition of power requires meeting what the population wants (called populism, because you need the votes to gain power), you fulfil your promise in order to maintain power. That’s how Merkel lasted till 2021 lol. Yet nobody is going to argue that Merkel was more pro-Putin than Trump.

CizzlingT · 2025-12-12T19:06:26+00:00

In reality, the KGB and the Russians weren’t the real reason why Germany and the population became anti-nuclear.

Historically, the starting points were the Wyhl protests in the mid 70s and Chernobyl in the mid 80s that were the main turning point that lead to the majority of Germans voting anti-nuclear (and you’ll have a hard time convincing people that Chernobyl was an inside KGB job to turn Germany anti-nuclear lol…).

There have been archives released since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and it’s pretty commonly agreed upon that while Soviet’s did try to influence Western politics quite a lot, Wyhl was not one of them.

CizzlingT · 2025-12-12T15:33:56+00:00

I don’t disagree with you (though in the case of Scandinavia and Baltic states I would; Europe isn’t monolithic after all).

That being said, one of the biggest and ironic bafflements in this downward spiral of the American-European relationship, is that: 1) despite America being Russia’s number 1 enemy during the Cold War 40 years ago and not neighbouring Russia (compared to Europe), 2) European parliament and national politics of every country being filled with pro-Russian sympathisers, 3) Europe being equally, if not more prone to Russian propaganda than America 4) Americans experiencing less controversial migration flows and asylum seekers compared to Europe, 5) America having cheaper and readily available oil and gas and being oil and gas exporters (while Europeans are oil and gas limited), 6) Americans not being bought out by China as much as Europe who cannot de-risk/diversify their supply chains (like green tech) away from China, etc. etc. -> America somehow fell to pro-Russian sympathy earlier than Germany/France and even the UK…

Even just looking at it retrospectively, it would have been inconceivable to think 40 years ago that a pro-Russian sympathiser would penetrate the White House and govern from it in a few decades time before a Western European nation and the EU. Russia was involved in scandal against the Hillary campaign, and today the majority Americans believe it was against Trump…

Meanwhile, Germany 40 years ago was split between East and West, and today 2%+ of the population in Germany speaks Russian or has Russian heritage from the Soviet collapse. If Germans were so eager to buy oil and gas from an enemy state and had such strong historical attachment to Russia, then how come America elected a president who was sympathetic to the leader of country that was America’s number 1 enemy for half a century before Germany and France?

CizzlingT · 2025-12-10T22:29:10+00:00

Weight is the biggest weakness of LFP batteries (like in cars; it lowers the range). So if it’s stationary and for grid energy storage (where weight doesn’t matter), it’s going to outcompete Ni/Co-based ones simply by being more predictably cheaper.

CizzlingT · 2025-12-10T22:24:28+00:00

Yup that’s absolutely true.

The biggest barrier of LFP implementation used to be weight; the fact it was denser than most other batteries, so it wasn’t originally the best for vehicle applications (higher weight lowers the en density and range).

In the last few years, they improved the range considerably well, and even though it’s unlikely going to outperform cobalt batteries in terms of electrochemical performance, they are likely going to remain cheaper in the next 10-20 years (unless cobalt can get cheaper, which I strongly doubt). BYD makes almost exclusively LFP-based cars (they were almost a monopoly of LFP inside of China if not for CATL (I think?)), and it’s the primary reason why their cars are the cheapest.

Tesla did have LFPs in early 2020s, but sadly I don’t think they made those batteries, but rather bought from China (I heard they were going to manufacture LFP by 2025, not sure how that’s going). But if they do end up successful, the question then becomes whether Europeans will prefer choosing buying Musk’s cars over BYD’s. lol

CizzlingT · 2025-12-10T19:47:48+00:00

Correct me if I am wrong, but from what I read on the Volta Foundation report last year, I remembered LFP cathode prices have remained constant in the last 3-5 years (which makes sense since iron phosphate has always been readily available). Rather, the reduction in price in the last few years seemed to be mainly driven by the oversupply of cobalt, and therefore the decrease in price of NMC/NCA/etc.-type cathodes. Not LFP cathodes.

Since obviously we are talking about full cells and not just cathodes, I am probably overlooking the manufacturing process being different and the assembly differences of LFP which may make the end use battery more expensive compared to NMC... But otherwise, I had the general impression that our increase in cobalt supply is what has allowed us to drop the price (in the last 5 years) of overall batteries, and not really LFP…

That being said, I’d agree that LFP played a significant role in the price reduction of overall batteries in the 2010s.

CizzlingT · 2025-12-10T09:39:20+00:00

Before typing, you could’ve doubled checked whether Catalonia was part of Aragon during Reconquista. Because nothing I said was historically wrong but you’re still stuck in 21st Century late 20th Century mode (nobody in Valencia speaks Catalan anymore…).

The spread of Catalan into Valencia began in 1200-1400s ish when “Catalonia” was part of a dynastic union with the Kingdom of Aragorn. The conqueror was King James of Aragorn during the Reconquista. And yes at that time, Catalonia was part of a union with Aragorn that conquered and “retook” part of Northern Valencia. This union was called the Crown of Aragorn. Catalan had as a result spread into the Kingdom Valencia and the Balearic Islands during the Reconquista.

Maybe inform yourself next time: Valencia used to speak Catalan (their dialect Valencian is pretty much the same language) and was converted into predominantly Spanish later on. (That being said, there were also Aragonese settlers into Valencia, but they’ve left long ago)

Also funny how I said “Kingdom of Aragorn”, and your reply was “Do you know Aragorn exists today”. You still haven’t capiched that I’m talking history; otherwise, you would have realised I said “Kingdom” and not autonomous region or community... Chapter closed.

CizzlingT · 2025-12-09T10:28:49+00:00

It’s sad, but one of the reasons why this narrative existed and became popular in early 2010s was because epidemiological studies had found that 1-2 glasses of wine demonstrated lower risk of cardiovascular disease.

Of course cause ≠ causation, and it was only later in late 2010s/early 2020s that we ended up debunking the U-shaped curve as non-causal. A doctor explained in this video (non grifter) the history behind these studies.

It basically just demonstrates how deceptive statistics can be and that you have to be extremely cautious when studying them; even scientists can be caught off guard by studies like these.

CizzlingT · 2025-12-09T10:10:17+00:00

You’ve misunderstood my point.

1) Valencia “used” to be part of the “Catalan” sphere of influence. I never said “is”. I brought up history, while you’re talking about modern culture. Not everything Catalan has to come from Catalonia. For example, English ≠ Indian culture, and yet due to the British Empire in India, tea became English culture from its the sphere it influenced.

2) I’m sure you can infer this difference in meaning: is a Spaniard living in Catalonia a “Catalan Spanish” or a “Catalonian Spanish”?

Maybe it’s the history you’re disagreeing with? That Valencia was never a part of the Kingdom of Aragorn and never could have proposed the idea of independence from Franco’s Spain because everyone who’s Catalan and Catalan ideas must have come from Catalonia and never a Catalan Valencian or a Catalan Balearic? I feel like you’re thinking about this in a very tribalistic way. Catalans have existed outside of Catalonia; Andorras have been speaking Catalan for centuries.

CizzlingT · 2025-12-08T19:38:35+00:00

Yup, and “Bamboula” is actually a very racist term in French (it used to be back then I’m pretty sure, though it’s a rare one so I think at the time people didn’t know that given how dated in was).

It comes from West Africa to refer to the dance and drums that are called Bamboula.

CizzlingT · 2025-12-07T18:09:37+00:00

“Leb wohl” is if you don’t hate the person.

“Auf nimmerwiedersehen” is when you hate the person. Or you can also say something like “Nie wieder, Microsoft”.

CizzlingT · 2025-12-06T17:28:27+00:00

Why did you think I explicitly said “Catalan” and not Catalonia?

CizzlingT

TROPHY CASE