According to a survey carried out in 2025 in the EU, more than 60% of low-value products inspected did not comply with European requirements or safety standards.

That is the difference. If you buy it from an EU based retailer, they will have imported something like a shipping container filled with the same type of product. So you need to basically check for that product once, if it is dangerous or whatever. If you get a bunch of very different products coming in via parcels, that can easily be 1000x more checks being required, which is basically impossible to do.

This is not about punishing China, but to make sure that Chinese sellers are actually following EU laws, when selling their products in the EU.

This is Mohammed bin Salmans project. Those renders are a great distraction from MBS crack down against opposing royals and Wahhabi radicals inside the kingdom. It also keeps the national wealth fund busy.

It points to assets being inflated, due to the rich not being taxed properly any longer.

Every investment has grown incredibly in price. Stocks, gold and also housing. That is honestly the biggest reason a blue collar workers pay can no longer feed a family of five easily. In the 60s food was actually pretty expensive back then for example. In the US of 1960 a stick of butter would be the equivalent of $27.74 today. However housing was not and that makes up a huge part of current spending, if you do not own a property already.

Those were originally made in the 90s. Japans population peaked in 2008 and has declined by over 5million people since. All without war, disease or stuff like that.

This is also true for some other countries. The current medium UN forecast projects Chinas population to more then half by the end of the century.

Even that does not change things too much. Not to half anyway, but just to 14% of global CO2 emissions.

We also consume a lot of meat and the like, which means we can feed a lot more people, if we wanted too.

Today a good number of countries have natural population declines due to people having too few children. That includes some big ones like China, Russia, Japan, Germany and Italy. Also all continents beside Africa have a fertility rate below replacement. So in the coming decades the global population is likely to fall. Most of that is the side effect of good developments like women getting more rights, education and people becoming wealthier. It will just take time.

Forbes beat you too it.

By 2200, if you read the article. So basically have less children.

The article suggest halving the global population by 2200. So not some nuclear war or disease killing half of humans basically over night. So more Japan and less nuclear war.

The US is bad, but when you look at CO2 emissions it is still just at 12.7% of global emissions for example. Not even close to half. Obviously on a per capita bases that is still crazy high.

If you spoke out against the Nazis, you would have ended up in a concentration camp and people knew that. So few actually did something. However you have some interesting statistics, like for example that there was a massive drop of children being named “Adolf” in Germany in 1942.

You can actually see a number of things happening. However European countries are deeply into the US hegemonic system and have benefited from it for years. Cutting it would hurt Europe a lot and they also really want some US support against Russia. So the solution is to be somewhat nice to the US, while slowly building up systems to replace the pieces of US influence.

We can already see that. The EU has signed a lot of trade deals since Trump started his trade wars. That does not work over night, but will move EU trade towards other countries. There are also things like the digital euro to replace Visa and Mastercard, which would cause a lot of issues, if they are removed in the EU. As well as moving away from US software. This is done especially quickly by the armed forces.Fossil fuels are also replaced with green alternatives, which is key as those are a massive US export. You also see a massive rearming, to be able to handle Russia easily without US support. If Russia looses, then the EU would be in an actually very good geostrategic position on that.

This is the sort of stuff, which somebody like Trump can not really understand. As in really bureaucratic, not flashy at all and somewhat slow.

I think this type of push from the US will show us a lot. Like, are we really expecting Germany to arrest Netanyahu?

The truth is that Netanyahu is just not going to travel to Germany as long as the ICC tries to arrest him. He is 78, so going to die soon anyway.

The EU has three times the population of Russia and an even larger economy. Russia can not hope to win an arms race and they know that. If they go for it, they end up bankrupting the country. So the smart option is for Russia to not try to keep up with Europe and make some sort of deal to limit the threat. The Soviets did that with the US btw and there are other examples as well.

Is any of the people who praise the rearming have an idea of what happens in case of war with Russia?

We see it in Ukraine and it currently looks like Moscow is burning. So a lot of death and destruction, but no way they win a war against Europe, when they can not even defeat Ukraine. Hence rearming to make sure that Russia does not have any stupid ideas. It is much cheaper then a war.

Did people forget that they are in a military alliance with China, Iran and N. Korea?

They have one with North Korea. Afaik Russia is not at war with the US right now, besides the US clearly being at war with Iran. There is no way Iran supports Russia in any meaningful way. They also do not have one with China. Hell China refuses to sell arms to Russia.

The goal is to show the other side that you are willing to fight and at best a war is impossible to win for them. The issue here is that just saying it does not work, you have to pay for it, so the other sides believes it.

In this case Russia has proven they willing to go to war. They also have a fairly large military and have repeatedly threatened other European countries. So they need to show that they are willing to fight Russia. The big issue is that the US, who has a stronger military than Russia and has made claims they would not protect European allies. So they need to show that they have both the means and will to defend themself. Hence more military spending, moving soldiers closer to Russia and so forth.

The ideal outcome would be Russia collapsing again or a deal, where both sides agree to reduce their military. However it has to be both sides.

the Maginot Line didn’t stop Germany.

France declared war on Germany, after Germany invaded Poland. In that sense the Maginot line actually worked to deter Germany from invading France.

The sanctions have not stopped Russia from fighting the war. It is clearly not enough to just sanction a country. Especially with the world splitting into different blocks right now and China and somewhat the US liking countries like Russia. So strong sanctions are no longer a viable option for everything. Similar story with Iran btw.

Also arms races have ended peacefully. The Cold War certainly did. The trick here is to still have the credibility to be able to defend yourself. Having a strong military is part of that.

But if someone has “hit their limits” like the article claims it means they can’t go on anymore.

When somebody “hits their limit” that means they are stagnating and not falling or collapsing. It is also important to be clear that this is about the economy.

If the Russian war economy would not be able to increase overall production(not necessarily production of specific weapons, but overall), you would expect them to slow down their advance and take higher losses, as the soldiers lack weapons and whatever to make that happen. We also we see fewer air attacks against Ukraine.

That seems to be the case. Russian personal casulties are generally pretty high and they are not taking a lot of land. At the same time Shahed attacks are 30% down in June compared to May.

Big losses would happen, if Russias economy collapses and only some time after that. That might be the case given the current fuel situation in the country.

Which was not happening, when Serhii K blew it up, as the pipeline was shut down already. Also by that logic international trade in general is sabotage to independence.

This thing is incredibly dumb on so many levels. Russia wanted to cut off Germany and did so. This however does not stop Russia from resuming deliveries on a technical level. So it could not stop that discussion in Germany. At the same time it hurt Ukraine a lot, as Germany did not consider them trustworthy at all, for a very good reason.

Stop spreading Russian propaganda. The pipelines to Norway are enough to meet German gas consumption. German independence was never an issue. In fact one of the four pipelines is still in working order and has not been used since, because of that. Russia did shut them down before that, so they were not even used to pay for the war.

However Germany has to prosecute, because not doing so would allow Russia to attack the pipelines to Norway, which are needed. If Germany lets this slip, then it allows Russia to attack them.