The coming elections in Germany could be much more important than is assumed. Whatever one says about the EU, it is France and Germany which really guide its decisions.
In the wake of the failed manoeuvres of President Macron, France is likely to remain in a state of political paralysis. It will continue to try and move forward but will stay stuck with a government that lacks a parliamentary majority.
Germany could then take a stronger role. But which coalition will be running the country? Till the February elections are over and done with, there will be enough time for the contorsions between the parties to multiply. The big choices facing Europe today are the same as the Germans face, among which: whether to spend much more on war or instead, to maintain existing levels of social protection; whether to sustain their help to Ukraine in its war or to wash their hands of the whole affair; whether to maintain the effort against climate change or abandon it...
The choice that will be made by the German people is likely to determine how other Europeans will be setting their choices.
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FARMING
According to current information, agricultural land hasn't stopped contracting. This doesn't always happen because greedy developers show determination to grab and destroy all parcels of land that they can reach, and so squeeze good profits out of them. Another reason is that families which from time immemorial have been tilling the fields are finding that their children do not wish to do the same; or that income from farming can in no way deliver a decent lifestyle; or for both reasons combined.
What's being done? - what can be done to hold back this retreat from agricultural land? Because of it, some people are concluding that it's best after all, instead of allowing such land to be "abandoned", to let it be "developed".
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INFORMATION
The global czars of internet communications, Musk and Zuckenberg among others, have seized the opportunity provided by the arrival of Donald Trump to power in the US, to scale down the surveillance on how their businesses operate.
These carry information and contacts between ever widening strata of people across the world. Now the czars want to be left alone, in charge of which information or misinformation they carry. Up to now, they accepted some checks, having concluded they couldn't do otherwise. With Trump at the helm, they reckon that in the name of freedom of expression, they should be allowed to publish whatever is at hand.
Including lies and misinformation on a massive scale. Whatever the US does, the same should not be allowed to happen in Europe. The global communications media have an enormous social responsibility - not to spread distress between nations and among peoples. The capitalists who run the media couldn't care less about freedom of expression. They just want to make as much money as they can from the communcations tools that happen to be theirs.
They want to do this even if on the back of the lies that would be allowed to flourish on their media, huge campaigns could eventually be launched for pogroms against the minorities of this world, and not just Arabs or Jews. This capitalist abomination needs to be restrained.