Fascism is not an opinion but a crime.

The EBU is called the European Broadcasting Union because it’s centred around Europe. Not because it is European. In the geographic sense, it never was. Which I explained amply.

Just looked through your comment history and apparently you even think you’re a leftist while overtaking LePen on the right. So get out of here, Strasserite or Nazbol or whatever you are.

Ok xenophobia it is, then. You are literally advocating to ethnically purify the EBU.

Shall we also kick the Spaniards, Greeks and practically all of the Balkan out because their music is too “oriental”, not adequate for your refined northwestern European taste?

Not that I care about the political show of Eurovision, but it’s made for Europe. Meaning only Europeans should participate.

It is made by the EBU, for its broadcasting area. That has always, since the very start, included the whole of the Mediterranean.

Not to mention that musically the Arabs are deeply intertwined with Europe due to millennia of cultural exchange over the highway called the Mediterranean. Morocco participated in 1980, but generally Arabs boycott the contest because Israel participates – but that doesn’t make them non-members of the EBU.

What, in the everloving fuck, but xenophobia could make you want to kick out founding members of the EBU. Do you also want to kick out Turkey? When you have a party and your direct neighbour wants to come, and traditionally was part of it, do you suddenly decide to slam the door into their face saying “you live on the wrong side of the backyard pool”?

And what’s that supposed to achieve, besides appeasing your xenophobia?

But that doesn’t mean that e.g. an Arab in Egypt would self-identify as European.

And noone ever claimed so. But if you think that Egyptians would be somehow be ashamed of their Macedonian Pharaos or think that Cleopatra was black you’d also be sorely mistaken. There is a shared cultural heritage in the Mediterranean that’s in many older and deeper than that between say Italy and Germany, divided by pretty much unpassable alps.

Regarding racism: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fiOJ6lrX0zY this was more than 10 years ago, it got only worse till then.

Note, for the record, it says “African non-Jews”, not “black people”. The primary distinction for Israeli rightoids is always Jew vs. non-Jew, not colour of skin or something, that’s incidental. If there were a sizeable number of, say, Russian non-Jews in Israel they’d want them gone just as much.

Ethiopian Jews are at the bottom of society, many of them live in the slums of Tel Aviv. Also doing shitty jobs that no one else wants to do & that pay barely enough to survive.

They are the worst-educated group of all. Ashkenazi are the best-educated. Doesn’t mean that Ethiopian Jews are discriminated against when it comes to access to education or such, the disparity is due to their different countries of origin having vastly differing educational levels.

When it comes to “pays barely enough to survive”, well, blame Likud and their pudding prices. Right-wing governments were never good at lowering effects of socio-economic background.

Israel is made by and for Ashkenazi Jews.

Mediterranean and Middle-East Jews nearly outnumber Jews of European origin in Israel, and Ashkenazi are only a subsection of European Jews. The current alpha asshat (Ben Gvir) has roots in Iraq. If you look at polls then Ashkenazi are significantly more liberal on average than other groups, which shouldn’t be surprising given that the exodus from the Muslim world wasn’t exactly a voluntary affair, is the most recent, and the conflict is still ongoing. Jigal Amir has Lebanese roots. Easy for people like them to have a personal axe to grind while Ashkenazi can see how much Europe changed. There’s also a strong Socdem current among Ashkenazi, inherited from Europe and our labour struggles here which just didn’t happen like that in the Arab states, Jews were a strong component of it (which is also why the Nazis came up with the term “Judeo-Bolshevism”, denigrating Socialists as Jews and Jews as Socialists in the same term). Random example: Rosa Luxemburg was a Jew (at least by ancestry and external perception).

OTOH yes fucks like the Stern Gang definitely were also Europeans, arriving at the same time as the Labour Zionists. What I’m saying is that the population has shifted quite a bit since then, overall diminishing direct European influence.

I know I know the usual “anti-colonial” narrative of “Europeans are responsible for everything bad in the world” is an easy “historical” extension of the usual “the CIA is responsible for everything bad in the world” narrative but, face it, we don’t have a monopoly on being assholes. That would be a rather racist claim I’d say. Other people are just as capable of that.

So you also want to kick out all the Arab states because they’re “not European”? The EBU has always included the whole Mediterranean. It has Arab founding members.

I don’t know where to even start. Maybe realise that the sea is literally called “middle of the earth”? That water is a highway, not a barrier? Do I have to bring music into this?

Then: Settler colonialist, yes, completely fair. Ethnostate, at least under right-wing governments, also yes. But “white supremacist”? Would a white supremacist state go to lengths to get black Jews into the country?

If you think that Mediterranean countries aren’t essentially European I don’t know what to tell you either. And that’s before considering the heavily Ashkenazi influence over at least early Israel. One of the EU’s official languages even is Semitic.

The whole Mediterranean is part of the EBU, at least Lebanon and Morocco are even founding members – the list isn’t easy to read because it lists when a broadcaster joined, not when the country first joined with any broadcaster.

The Arab nations boycott the ESC though because Israel participates. So, please, if you suspend Israel do it early enough so that those states have an opportunity to do a national selection.

I, for one, think that given the recent history and the farce that was the Electric Callboy situation we should from now on send metal acts with steadily increasing levels of heavyness until Europe capitulates.

(The “Electric Callboy situation” was the NDR judging that this song was “not suited for radio play”. It’s one of the most eurovision things ever produced. German radio stations commented the situation by playing it on heavy rotation)

Article from 2018 says biggest groups are 4200 engine drivers, 3600 traffic controllers and 1700 station service. Of 38000 civil servants 26500 in active duty (i.e not in pension), including 3500 suspended and currently working for more wages as managers.

Numbers certainly changed in six years but I wouldn’t expect much drift in the ratios, it’s not like engine drivers are on average older than traffic controllers or such.

2007 the DB had 20000 engine drivers, 8000 of which were civil servants. So maybe 3000 left now?

The DB is 100% state owned, in particular the federation. If the government says they don’t want a GDP slump due to all this, then the DB has to make sure there’s not going to be a GDP slump because of this.

But, nah, they rather try and squeeze money out of the DB.

Civil servants don’t have that right in Germany, at the utmost they can work to rule. OTOH you practically can’t be fired, you can’t be laid off, you get a cushy pension and the state is legally required to have good working conditions, and courts will enforce it for you.

There’s a reason that all those civil servants the DB inherited when it got privatised are still civil servants: The status is actually quite nice. Same goes for Deutsche Post and Telekom, they also still have tons of civil servants they, as private companies, have to treat like the state treats other civil servants.

Oh, side tidbit: Civil servants don’t get days off. They get ordered to recuperate.

One needs to distinguish between three types of people here: AfD functionaries who draw up deportation plans, definitely fascist, core voters, generally inherited from the NPD, who vote for the AfD because of those deportation plans, definitely fascist, and then protest voters who vote for the AfD despite those plans. Also despite the rest of their programme.

Long story short in Germany the left parties have been captured by (at best) labour aristocracy and neoliberals at worst, their policies led to a severe lack of social housing, an explosion of precarious employment, and it’s not like the labour aristocracy is above agitating against “freeloaders not pulling their weight”. We have a gigantic precariat, many more are afraid of landing there, and a significant portion of that precariat is pissed enough at the establishment to vote AfD because it’s the only party that hasn’t betrayed them so far, or they want to show a middle finger to the other parties, or both, take your pick.

What’s crucial now is that this protest moment is used to actually address those very legitimate grievances of the precariat. To invest in all that good stuff – housing (now with great insulation), public transport so people don’t need to buy expensive electric cars, district heating so people don’t need to buy expensive heat pumps. No land in large cities to build housing on? Expropriate it, doesn’t even need a change to the constitution. Pay for it all with wealth taxes which somehow have been completely cancelled when was it 90s? Suddenly all that anger that the AfD tries to redirect at immigrants will be gone, protest voters can stop voting for Nazis and clean their consciousness, and we’ll all be happy (for the moment).

Ah, I see. On the one hand here’s a green light and all you need to do is point it out to people. On the other there’s a green light and you’re saying “fuck the system, let’s go 200m down the road where the light is red and cross there”.

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No it’s EU nationals who did ask for settled status, and are entitled to it, but the Brits still didn’t get around to process the paperwork and apparently they’re not able to figure it out on the spot, either. One would expect authorities to check whether something is pending and prioritise it before deporting someone. Maybe not a final decision but the border authority being able to say “yeah this looks fine on first sight go ahead they’ll send you a letter later”. If you’re incompetent at least have the decency to be lenient.

A lot of those “legitimate feelings” are fabricated by the AfD.

There’s a fucking reason I said legitimate and not just feelings. The AfD didn’t cause precarious employment relations, it wasn’t the first to agitate against welfare recipients, it didn’t cause the lack of affordable housing, it didn’t come up with Hartz IV and unconstitutional sanction regimes. It didn’t set the policy of the established parties since reunification. 30% of the workforce are in precarious employment, not counting the unemployed mind you, about 12% never know anything else. More are afraid of landing there.

What the AfD did is direct those feelings in directions that suit them and not address the actual issues (according to their programme they even want to make it worse).

For the rest, I don’t see any politician having the guts to tell people the truth, that climate change, foremost, costs a lot of money and sacrifice.

No it doesn’t. Maybe from the rich when we finally get around to taxing private planes out of existence but not in general. Making sure that there’s proper public transit means not only that people don’t need to buy a new car, they can get rid of their old one, investing in district heating would mean that people don’t need to buy heat pumps and generally make building cheaper. A lot of climate measures have the opportunity to save money and simultaneously make the life of the precariat better. More vacation days means people won’t be annoyed if you tell them to take a train and ferry to Mallorca. I diagnose you with lack of political imagination.

That addresses the precariat. To address capital there’s another equation: Not investing now will mean magnitudes more of economical damage down the line. We literally can’t afford to do nothing.

have enough power in many muncipal governments and in the Bundesrat (federal council) to block everything from moving forward.

Nah it doesn’t work that way, they’d need a majority both in the council and parliament and be in government to block things as any of the three can initiate proceedings on their own. Municipalities don’t get a say at all.