NICK POPE
CONTRIBUTOR
German farmers began a week of protest against the government on Monday to push back against subsidy cuts that they say could put them out of business, according to The Associated Press.
Large convoys of trucks and tractors lined streets all over the country on Monday morning, including in the street leading to Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, as farmers are standing up to the liberal-green coalition government for its moves to phase out tax breaks for agricultural vehicles and diesel fuel, according to the AP. Farmers are enraged that the government is looking to eliminate the subsidies, a decision which they say would threaten their ability to remain in business.
The German government opted to eliminate the subsidies to help plug a 17 billion euro gap in the 2024 budget, according to the AP. Officials have since offered to amend their proposal to gradually phase the subsidies out by 2026, but the farmers are still strongly opposed to the decision. (RELATED: Country On Green Transition’s Leading Edge Will Fire Up Coal Plants To Meet Demand This Winter)
The Alternative for Germany (AfD), a conservative populist opposition party that has seen a surge in popularity as Germany’s economy has struggled, is supporting the protests, according to the AP. Meanwhile, the government is warning that the farmers’ protest movement may be co-opted and infiltrated by far-right wing elements.
The liberal-green governing coalition, led by Prime Minister Olaf Scholz, has seen its support fall precipitously since 2021, with a majority of polled Germans stating in December 2023 that they want a change in leadership and early elections, according to Bloomberg News.
Germany has spent vast sums of money to facilitate a green energy transition, but the country is still on track to miss its climate targets. Officials also moved to shut down the country’s remaining nuclear plants in April 2023 amid concerns about the long-term adequacy of energy supply, while its gross domestic product is thought to have shrunk in 2023 and expected to show weak growth in 2024, according to International Politics and Society.
Environment and Energy Minister Robert Habeck warned in June that Germany may have no choice but to deliberately diminish its industrial capacity if its current natural gas deal with Russia expires in 2024 without a replacement in place.
The German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action did not respond immediately to requests for comment.
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Of course it’s always the ‘far right’ who will be conjured up to taint the protests. Never mind the real fascists, those who push their own ideology down our throat, are in fact in the government.
And just that gouvernement in Germany fear for the lost of democracy 😀
In order for the government to protect democracy it is necessary to control for whom and what can be voted for.
Such as we will not allow X on the Ballot because they may, in the future, be found guilty of an offence!
I can openly admit I don’t like Big Don but to circumvent an open and honest election reminds me of the former East Germany where you could vote for anyone you like from a ballot of one and it was illegal not to vote!
What is happening to the Land of the Free?
Bill Gates needs another pair of shoes.
Bill Gates needs another pair of shoes.
“What is happening to the Land of the Free?”
It is being systematically undermined by the far-left ideology.
The Left has taken over the government and societies institutions, and are in the process of trying to keep themselves in power in pepetuity by destroying the current American society and giving it a radical leftwing makeover favorable to radical leftists.
That’s what is happening.
Electing Trump would throw a huge monkeywrench into the left’s socialist “paradise” and that’s why they are doing everything they can, legal and illegal, to try to keep him off the ballot.
Have you heard the latest on the Georgia DA trying to convict Trump?
https://abcnews.go.com/US/defendant-trumps-georgia-election-case-seeks-disqualify-da/story?id=106209092
Co-defendant in Trump’s Georgia election case seeks to disqualify DA, alleging romantic relationship with prosecutor
Fani Willis allegedly had a romantic relationship with prosecutor Nathan Wade”
No corruption there. Not only does the Georgia DA have a romantic relationship with the prosecutor Nathan Wade, she is also paying him with lots of Georgia taxpayer money.
So that’s the kind of character we have going after Trump: A corrupt, possibly criminal, Georgia DA.
Winning!
Trump has been a left-wing Democrat before. He may be one again. No telling.
After all the crap he endured, no woke Democrat is safe
US political culture spreading far and wide.
Equating voting with democracy produces a false result. It’s bad math.
Uhh…, you forgot to include those who count the votes.
Unnecessary. It’s obvious.
It’s the tried and tested far-right bogeyman that European governments have been using for decades, and the propaganda media are very happy to help, hand in glove.
Examples:
SKY NEWS: “There are fears far-right groups could try to capitalise on the protests and the government says it’s monitoring the situation.”
GUARDIAN: “Partial U-turn by Berlin fails to avert week-long nationwide action that government says could be co-opted by right wing extremists”
REUTERS: “while protesters clashed with police and leading politicians warned that the unrest could be co-opted by extremists.”
FINANCIAL TIMES: “Ministers have warned that right wing extremists seeking to bring down the government were piggybacking on the farmers’ protests, in a way that threatened Germany’s democratic institutions.
“Appeals are circulating with fantasies of revolution,” said Robert Habeck, the economy minister and deputy chancellor. “Extremist groups are being formed, ethno-nationalist symbols are being openly shown.”
……. same treatment for the French Yellow Vests, Dutch Farmers and the Canadian Truckers.
Right-wing extremists are seeking to bring down the government by abusing Democracy ™ — why they intend to ask people to vote for them! It’s almost as bad as Trump-Hitler in the US.
Democracy ™ dies in darkness when people are allowed to vote for non-communist candidates. This outrage must be stopped!!
“Right-wing extremists”, a handy label that the Left gets to define.
They slap it on any and every group that doesn’t agree with the Left’s actions.
(No thought required to evaluate what they say. They’ve been “labeled”.)
How do know it is not far-left agitators dressed as far right groups and creating chaos in order to make the Left look like a safer alternative?
Hasn’t this been going all along from Westphalia to Washington?
It was a far-left agitator waving around the Stars and Bars during the Truckers Demonstration in Ottawa. Agit-prop is what these groups do. It’s no accident that the supposed Antifa in the United States looks like the Sturmabteilung and uses the same street tactics they did in the early 1930s.
“same treatment for the French Yellow Vests, Dutch Farmers and the Canadian Truckers.”
Yes, this is Standard Operating Procedure for the radical left. Their efforts are all aimed at demonizing their political opponents.
“FINANCIAL TIMES: “Ministers have warned that right wing extremists seeking to bring down the government were piggybacking on the farmers’ protests, in a way that threatened Germany’s democratic institutions.”
No, that’s wrong. The Right doesn’t threaten Germany’s democratic instituitions. What the Right threatens is socialist institutions. They are not the same thing, although the radical Left wants you to equate the two.
A country can have a democratic goverment without socialists being involved. Leftwing socialists don’t want others thinking this way.
They quite possibly are over-playing their hand. Two things come to mind. One, tell people it’s far-right to protest these government edicts and you just might convince a lot of voters that they must be far-right in general. Then they begin voting accordingly. The second thing is the old adage, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. They are pushing groups like the truckers to become allies of the far-right.
The AfD are a far right party. If they back the protests then the far right have infiltrated the protests.
Even the leader of the AfP quit the party when they lurched so far to the right that they were no longer part of the democratic spectrum.
You can’t be democratic if you treat people as inferior – unequal – merely because of their race or religion or just being a Jew.
Germany has some bad history relating to these kinds of political parties.
“The AfD are a far right party”
Could you give some examples of the political positions of the AfD, so others can judge just how “far-right” this party is?
Supporting farmers does not appear to be a radical idea.
Supporting Farmers is not a radical idea.
Supporting the Nazi war machine is.
Anger after German AfD leader urges ‘pride’ in wartime troops | The Times of Israel
Even the then AfD leader quit the party when they went that way.
They are no longer a right-wing party. They are a far right party.
Every political party that doesn’t rigidly clamp down on free speech will have people in it with views they may not be publicly comfortable with. Even the AfD and even the US Democrat party. This does not make the entire party hate-mongers or extremists.
He’s top of the slate for election. Not a fringe member.
You are clearly determined to make excuses for the Nazi party supporters.
Why?
Actually, I don’t want to know.
You seem to be ignoring the fact that the NSDAP was a socialist party and that Hitler stated repeatedly that he was a socialist.
“Democratic spectrum”– another way of saying “the people” vs. “the enemy” in Maoist terms.
Looks like green Germany is finally reaching the breaking point. Countrywide protests imply serious organization and widespread discontent.
Germans by and large are an obedient folk (a German’s reply to how could the populace have come to following a madman like Hitler?). If this is still true, it seems the people have been pushed beyond the breaking point. Probably, after Brexit and the Dutch farmers’ protests and shift to the right and similar shifts in Italy, Austria, Slovakia and France (?), these developments were also encouragement for a German revolt. That the farmers aren’t accepting compromise is a strong sign that a large list of lesser issues that they have put up with for so long won’t be tolerated. This should widen the protest beyond the farmers’ concerns.
I hope for
Lived in Germany for almost six years and speak German fluently. In my experience it is not so much obedience as a desire for ordnung—civil order, which these protests most definitely are not.
More a mix of both.
I also speak German, aber nicht fleissen deutch! Ich war Küchenhilfe an einem US Kaserne in München gearbeitet
‘…how could the populace have come to following a madman like Hitler?’
Those of us that came of age in the post-war West are hypocritical on this point; On the one hand, we criticize individual Germans for not taking a public stand that would certainly have earned them (and likely their immediate families) a bullet or trip to the camps, while ignoring our own passivity in the face of current government transgressions against our own liberties and culture.
You are absolutely on the mark Frank! BTW It wasn’t me who asked that question. It was a question asked a long time ago, I think by a journalist. My late brother-in-law was 12yrs old living in Berlin at the close of the war and he said something similar.
I belong to that generation and, yes, I have not taken a public stand against a certain government transgression, and I feel guilty but only a bit, and to some extent. Because that fear for “a bullet or a camp” is real and, thus, understandable
.&
I know the one and the other Green voter, no-one will vote again for 😀
Fully agree with you Rud. But it’s not only Germany that has had its’s fill of far left Green politics in Europe. The Dutch have woken up to the climate/ expensive energy scam, the Italians won’t have it nor the Poles. The French have been insulated from it by their nuclear dominant energy and the Scandinavians have instituted common sense energy policies to insulate themselves from the renewables only/ Net Zero nonsense. Apart from the EU, it is only the English speaking developed nations now who are committed to the UN inspired AGW/ CO2 farce of global decarbonization which is the stupidest scientific rationale seen in modern times.
But even there, New Zealand has thrown off the green blinkers as their economy was being threatened by the green policies of the former Labor government, however Australia has the worst-case ignorant green climate ideology that is causing deep inflation and cost of living stress, that the socialist government doesn’t understand it is causing! Resource-rich countries like Australia, Canada and America should not be in relative energy poverty and experiencing diminishing lifestyle quality because of far-fetched green ideology that cannot even affect the perceived climate problem, that has not even been scientifically established yet!
The leftwing leadership of the Western world is on the path to self-destruciton.
The question is who will be destroyed first, the leftwing leadership, or the Western world?
It is starting to look like maybe the leftwing leadership will be what is destroyed. They are on shaky ground now. But so are the economies of the Western world.
This time next year may look a lot different. In a good way.
The peasants have too much! Take away more, or we will miss our climate targets!
The beatings will continue.
Until morale improves?
What we have here, is a failure to communicate.
The deaths that are happening due to green energy and the price of keeping warm will explode in Europe as these ignorant liberals sabatoge the food source as well. Those that pushed hardest toward ending fossil fuel use will suffer first and more than more cautious countries. I can’t say I’m unhappy that America has Germany as a bad example . Hopefully a house cleaning is coming in the elections in November .
We need to increase our hydro electric power sources along with the new technology driving the nuclear industry. When the alarmists refused to accept hydro electricity as a “green energy” we should have all seen it was never about saving the planet .
Let’s see if I’ve got this right? The German government imposes a massive tax on transportation fuels. Then they rebate a portion of that tax to farmers who are using the fuel not for transport over roads and bridges but merely to operate agricultural equipment on their own land. And that is called a ‘fossil fuel subsidy’.
Thanks. That’s just what I was going to say, but you put it much better.
That’s about the strength of it.
As I understand it, in the US, off road use of diesel, and possibly other liquid fuels, do not pay taxes (theoretically ) intended for road building and maintenance.
That is correct! And this is part of what the enviros talk about with “subsidies to farmers” The farm bill is mostly the food stamps programs, very little to farmers.
“That is correct! And this is part of what the enviros talk about with “subsidies to farmers”
They are conveniently confusing taxes and subsidies.
Taxes are where a company (or some entity) pays a certain percentage of its profits to the government each year.
Government subsidies are when the government pays a company to do something that wouldn’t otherwise be done in the private market place, and/or something the government wants to promote.
Paying subsidies comes out of the taxpayers’ pockets.
A company paying any amount of taxes increases the amount of money in the taxpayers’ pockets.
They are polar opposites, that the Left wants to conflate, to confuse people about the issues.
Language is very important. The Left distorts the language. The Right needs to correct the Lefts’ distorted language.
Language is very important.
Someone has hacked the account of Tom Abbott!
“And that is called a ‘fossil fuel subsidy’.”
It’s similar to when the Left claims oil companies are getting government subsidies, when in reality the oil companies taxes are being cut, they are not being paid any money from the government, which is what a subsidy is.
The Left think that your money is their money. When a person or company pays less taxes, the Left looks at it as taking money out of *their* pockets. And I gues, in a way, it is, but in a good way. 🙂
Likely if all the climate activists came out to the farms, planted the crops, weeded them, collected and spread manure, harvested, flailed, and winnowed the grain…..all for the same cost as the farmer’s equipment payments, and diesel fuel, then the only thing the farmer would have to complain about is the weather….
Why don’t those whiny farmers just use battery-powered combine harvesters?
Keep in mind that all the equipment used in the US to produce the corn used for ethanol is powered by diesel fuel.
Better confer with big oily boob on that, I don’t think you have any evidence of that assertion. I feel there should be mostly battery-powered equipment.
Sure, you might be able to give sixty or seventy examples of farmers using diesel fuel, but until you document every single farm’s usage, that’s just a lot of anecdotes.
Find a picture of battery powered 300hp 4 wheel drive tractor or corn picker and show us what it looks like, genius.
Now I feel like you’re maybe insincere about calling me a genius. I don’t know much about HP computers but what good is a farm thingy if it needs to have 300 laptops to run its apps?
general… I think Rich was using a little sarcasm there.
I always try to give a ‘+’ to anyone that trys to help the sarc impared.
We always have.
Without more information it is difficult for me to assess what it is about.
(There are many links given. I can’t read them all without direction.)
Are the “subsidies” just “non-taxation”?
Is the fuel usage by farmers treated as a legitimate business cost. Or has the government simply defined it as evil fossil-fuel consumption and therefore extra taxable in order to save the planet at any cost?
In the UK at least, farmers use the so-called Red Diesel.
Ordinary diesel but when the tanker delivered it, the driver threw a handful of crystal dyestuff into it first and made it go a pinkish red colour.
(Devious folks worked out that kitty litter would turn it back into White Diesel you could (legally illegally) run your car on so they changed the dye but it was still red coloured)
It was exempt from the classic Fuel Duty, which I think was 57pence per litre.
When the farmer paid for at at the end of the month Value Added Tax would have been added to the total invoice BUT, if the farmer had sufficient turnover could reclaim the VAT at the end of the year.
It was never in any way a subsidy – it was ordinary fuel that hadn’t had Fuel Duty (tax) added to it
A lot like kerosene for home heating. It is exempt from Fuel Duty
In the UK, the removal of that allowance would, to all intents and at present time, double the cost to farmers for their diesel fuel
US state and federal taxes are heavy, but not EU-heavy. Untaxed diesel is available for farm and construction equipment. Are those off-road uses subsidized?
Home heating oil in the US is not taxed at the higher rate applied to diesel used in vehicles, same thing. Heating your home should not be taxed for “road use.” (It is of course prohibited to use your home heating fuel to fill the fuel tank of your diesel powered vehicle, should you own one.)
This is NOT a “subsidy” of home heating oil (aka “diesel with red dye added”). That is, unless you’re mind is infected with the pretzel logic of an Eco-Nazi.
It’s like this. The elites in government want to discourage fossil fuel use by the little people so they put an outrageous tax on fuel. So far so good, right? Now those dirty peasants have to squeeze into a tiny little underpowered car that they can’t afford to drive very often.
But that has the unintended consequence of making locally-grown food more expensive than food imported from countries that are not as retarded. It seems nobody knew that farmers use fossil fuels. So naturally the government rushes to the rescue and slaps a big tariff on agricultural imports.
But still food is more expensive and voters don’t like that, so they rebate some of the tax causing the problem in the form of a “subsidy”. Government is too complex for you simpleminded peasants to understand, so stop trying, ok?
But then an even more retarded government gets into power and wastes unprecedented sums on bird shredders that are not fit for any purpose other than their proven prowess at despoiling wilderness areas and liquidating birds and bats. Much more money is needed to pay cronies who are getting rich pretending that wind and solar can power an industrial society. So obviously the solution is to eliminate subsidies on fossil fuels such as are encouraging farmers to use diesel when wind power is so much cheaper.
You see that the benevolent government is just doing the farmers a favor don’t you? The kulaks are too stupid to realize that they should invest in battery-powered farm equipment or better yet replace their fields with solar panels purchased from communist slave labor factories powered by coal. Can you believe how stupid the radical Right is?
Message to rampant far left Greens, never mess with a convoy of farmers on big tractors towing muck spreaders behind their tractors.
If you do, the old saying when the shit hits the fan will become very meaningful to you, and your shouty anarchist followers.
anarchist followers
By definition, anarchists consider government evil and unnecessary. The government is the entity regulating the farmers and their income sources in opposition to their wishes. Ergo, the anarchists, if there actually are any, would be in league with the farmers. The “shouty followers” aligned with the greens are for changing the economic relationship of the farmers and government, as are the farmers themselves. None of these people are anarchists.
Conflating anarchy with Marxists is ignorance personified.
Wow tough crowd today.
So I guess the part about the state withering away once communism is achieved must have been fake news.
fake dogma
The ‘withering away’ supposedly occurs after the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’. In practice, the latter requires an awful lot of government, what with organizing the economy and settling scores with the regime’s opponents.
On my Wisconsin dairy farm, our liquified manure spreader has a throw of about 15 yards. Designed to cover one contour on average. Powered by the tractor PTO. Plenty good enough to cover one contour of green protesters with brown.
(The manure is removed automatically from the milking barn and the main indoor feed shed. Is removed by skid loader from outdoor feed areas near the other two barns. Dairy cow ‘Manure’ also has a high urine content. All goes into a big manure pit where water is added and nature takes its course ‘ripening’ until we need to spread on a field. The ripe slurry is augered out of the pit to fill the big manure spreader tank.)
It’s been done.
Dec 19th 2023 in Dijon, French farmers sprayed slurry and dumped manure over local government buildings in protest.
May 28th 2022 in Darlington, British farmers sprayed animal rights protestors with slurry when they tried to disrupt an event.
Should be done more often.
Oh I’d pay to see “climate protesters” get bathed in manure. That would give them a nice taste of what they would be knee deep in if they manage to realize their wet dreams of banning fossil fuel use.
Remember that ‘Far Right’ means anyone who does not subscribe to leftie fascist agenda – you know, normal people.
Exactly!
It’s actually not as straight-forward a situation as the article indicates. The federal budget and constitutional courts are involved.
It actually is, and the German farmers are making that crystal clear to ALL Germans, everybody will be impacted by these ideological climate agendas.
#GermanFarmers
As an illiterate is your Mommy doing your keyboard work?
Are you ok, genny?
It’s the Climate. GC is getting “heated up”.
GC is right, I can confirm it as I’m living here 😀
Extra taxes are not the only solution.
Cutting back on ‘green’ energy projects would almost certainly save much more money than harassing the farmers.
How much does Germany pay out yearly in Net Zero/Green subsidies?
How much money would the German government get yearly from raising taxes on German farmers?
Raising taxes on German farmers means raising the price of German food. Is this really what the German politicians want to do?
The German politicians should cut enough subsidies to make up for any taxes on German farmers and leave the farmers alone so they can keep feeding all of us.
I think messing with the farmers and the food supply is going to be a “bridge too far” for the radical Left. This latest protest is part of that. The protests will grow if the radical Left persists in trying to destroy our food supplies.
What the farmers need to do is make it clear that the latest green stupidities will increase the cost of BEER.
THEN the torches and pitchforks will come out post haste!
Hit them where they live! 🙂
It actually is. The German budget has been lurching along since last year when a court ruling prevented them from reallocating €60 billion to promised green investment programs. Now they’re having to find that money from anywhere they can, short of the most obvious solution; cutting back on what they’re spending.
Wow, looks like an insurrection to me. Has the Bundesministerium started to round up the usual suspects yet?
> phase out tax breaks for agricultural vehicles and diesel fuel
Understand these “subsidies” are actually partial relief from crushing taxes.
Germany certainly has the populace trained for dependency on the EU government. Of course, when you start take away self-sufficiency, and then you start taking away the benefits of socialism, the populace gets a little angsty.
Today the farmers. Tomorrow the factory workers. Pretty soon you’ll have the Lenin/Stalin ideal (and likely Russian and Chinese leadership in place over the EU).
Step one, change the name to the EUSSR. Step two, drop the E.
As a farm kid (Salute to Rud), you have to remember the communists first declare war on the farmers. Stalin killed millions as did Mao. Socialists like to pick on rich farmers because they have all that land that the state should own and we could apportion it out to the more deserving. History keeps repeating.
Someone help me understand how taking less taxes than you want is a subsidy? The money taken from the farmer is his. Taking less from him is not subsidizing him, it is robbing him less.
These stinking politicians need to get out of town.
Dude! The government owns all the money and any decision to not confiscate 100% is government spending. What’s with you right-wing extremists? Sheesh!
What’s bad is the radical Left actually looks at it that way.
There is a difference of sorts. Tax credits for wind, solar, EV, etc. are deductions that other businesses and individuals pay under the general tax laws. While tax credits, or a lower direct cost a the filling station, is sort-of “forgiving” a tax that most pay, it has a completely different logic. The fuel tax not paid for off road use is not paying the tax because one is not using the resource (the roads) that the tax is supposed to support.
Tax “credits” for wind and solar are “credits” that can be transferred to other endeavors, i.e. “sold.” The wind and solar installations are awarded these “credits” even without producing anything. So a subsidy on the QT, not a “reduction in confiscation” for taxes being levied on some type of actual value creation.
“Someone help me understand how taking less taxes than you want is a subsidy? The money taken from the farmer is his. Taking less from him is not subsidizing him, it is robbing him less.”
Perfect! Exactly right! A very good way to put it!
Story tip – Poets Play the Carbon Game – PJ Media
A critique would be helpful.
“With regard to the farmers’ protest week that started on Monday, the Chancellor said: “Criticism is part of democracy. It is necessary and part of it. Nobody should complain about it. I certainly don’t.” Scholz added: “Of course, the end does not justify all means. In view of the concessions made by the German government, which has already reversed some of the cuts to agricultural diesel following protests, it is therefore important “that moderation and moderation are now maintained”. This should also be a concern of democrats, “especially in times like these” (dpa).
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)”
Chancellor Scholz forgot (he is best qualified for) to mention, that “times like these” we have only thanks to his and his colleagues policy…
To all intents, this The End for the EU
Going way way back to (end of) WW2 and the powers that be in Europe realised what a near scrape it had all been, esp with regard to food supply.
i.e. How Europe was so at the mercy of U-Boats and Atlantic convoys.
That was the realisation and hence, the EEC came into being as a primary means to ‘help’ the farmers grow lots and lots of stuff so that Europe would never again be beholden to anyone else for the supply of munchies.
Helped by immense amounts of cheap nitrate coming from then redundant munitions factories at end of ’45 (odd innit that that’s when the CO₂ curve really starts ramping up) and mega new farm machinery, they got what they wanted.
And a whole load more, hence wine-lakes, butter and beef mountains, oceans of olive oil etc etc thro the early 70’s
It wasn’t as if The Farmers saw very much of the bureaucracy’s generosity, it was much more of a stick than a carrot and anyway, the cronies in the machinery, seeds, feeds and chemicals got all the money. And land agents from the skyrocket values of farmland.
Now see what we have, they have completely turned against the farmers.
The very origin, the whole Raison d’Etre of the entire EU is now being scrapped.
Why: Because it has become such a huge and voracious self-serving monster – the parasite is killing the host.
All this is about are the legions and legions of fat-cat bureaucrats in Brussels and Strasbourg trying to save their own necks – just like Terminator in the molten metal.
Plus ten times more professional lobbyists and 100 times more bloated cronies
Nothing Else Matters, apart from protecting/continuing insanely cushy ‘jobs’ and fine wines in cosy restaurants all around Brussels – despite all the fine words and utter BS
“Far right wing” haha, even kindergarten students could do better than that.
Wait till Macron tries similar in France – German/Dutch peasants are soft & cuddly teddy bears compared French farmers….
Putin and Xi will be laughing their plonkers off.
Brandon would be as well if he knew what day-of-the-week it is and where his defence minister was – even just random guess would be nice.
Peta, Brandon is just as aware of (fill in the blank) as he ever has been.
Cute! Thanks.
Isn’t he in a Ukraine bunker?
The EU has always been about protectionism, first and foremost. Each country was supposed to specialise in one main economic area, which would be protected, and be dependant on the other EU countries for other things. It’s falling apart because none of the member countries wanted to do things that way.
These farmers don’t fool around, I saw a clip on FB where a protestor sat down in front of one of the farm tractors and raised his hand in a stop gesture, the farmer simply lowered his front end loader bucket and scooped the protestor up and kept on going. Score one for the farmer.
On my dairy farm, I have a front loader bucket on my compact tractor (27hp, ideal for haying). Doesn’t make sense for the big 150HP tractor—cheaper to buy a skid steer loader. Never used it to scoop up a protestor altho that would have been fun.
They usually have hay forks which can be swapped for the bucket.
If you need a 150HP tractor anyway, it’s cheaper to buy it fitted with the bucket and forks than to buy a separate skid steer or small tractor/loader.
As to whether any farms in Germany are big enough to warrant a 150HP tractor, that’s a different matter. I’d have thought 50 – 75 would be about right.
Depends on where the farm is located. I have seen some large tractors in our annual visits to the family.
Do you know what size the farms are? Back in the 1970s, we used to grow 1,500 acres of wheat using 3 x 70 drawbar HP (90 engine HP) tractors.
Back in the day you would had only needed to lower the bucket half way and let the front teeth take care of the obstruction.
When the food shortages start they’ll blame it on excess population, that’s the plan.
Subsidies? Gasoline tax is to fund roads. The drivers on those roads pay taxes on fuel to support the roads they drive on. Farmers do not drive their vehicles on the roads but on fields to produce food. This tax was never meant to be paid by farmers. This is the same here in US. Green idiots need money to pay their outlandish schemes.
Germans go to the polls in a federal election 2025. The election could be held as early as August 2025, but more likely in the late Autumn.
The current Social Democratic/Green coalition should be thrown out then. Like other European countries, people have had a gutful of the green / renewable / climate nonsense.
The German election may coincide or be very close to the Australian federal election that is due September 2025, unless called earlier.
Both current German & Australian nutty green/ideological governments should lose office then.
When’s COP29 again?
Since Germany is forced to pay through the nose for US Molecules of Freedom, after NATO bombed the NordStream pipelines, the Budged could not work.
So the Constitutional Court ruled the so-called Debt-Brake applied.Meaning money had to be looted from somewhere, the farmer because COVID money could not be.
Chancellor Scholz still claims Russia stopped the delivery.
Add to that Ukraine – that was supposed to be solved by May 2022, as EU’s Ursula van der Leyen said Russia’s economy would be in TATTERS by then with sanctions. US Ukraine funding likely going to Israel, means Germany gets the Ukraine bill.
Germany’s economy is in TATTERS. Now France’s Prime Minister just resigned. Russia’s economy is doing fine. Ukraine is in TATTERS.
Farmers blocked all kinds of roads, even autobahn exits. And Rail strikes are planned this week.
Something very suspicious – US Defense Sec. Austin went AWOL for weeks.
Tractor banner here :
“Without blood one would be white”
“Without air would one be blue”
“Without a brain would one be Green”
I’ll put that on a T shirt. In the style of Francis Bacon:
No blood maketh man white
No breath maketh man blue
No brain maketh man green
From the article: “Meanwhile, the government is warning that the farmers’ protest movement may be co-opted and infiltrated by far-right wing elements.”
This is standard leftwing propaganda. They always try to demonize their opponents by making them out to be extremists.
In this instance, the lefties want you to equate “far-right wing elements” with Adolf Hitler.
They don’t ever limit it to “right-wing, it’s always “far-right wing”, as they are intentionally promoting the idea that the Right is extreme.
It’s ironic: The extreme Left trying to characterize the Right as extreme. They always do it whether it is appropriate or not. It’s part of the leftwing rhetoric (SOP).
DEEP OCEAN VOLCANOS CAUSE CONTINUOUS, PERIODIC GLOBAL WARMING BY EL NINOs
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/natural-forces-cause-periodic-global-warming
EXCERPT
Self-Destruction of the West?
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This study shows, the existence of the UAH satellite measurements started in 1979, world temperature increases have been increasing, step-by-step, and are dominantly due to El Niños, and their after effects.
The sun and moon and tectonic plate movement are driving forces of El Niños.
We must adhere to the golden rule of causality of real science: observe, measure and repeat.
In reality, CO2 does not play the slightest role here.
The IPCC climate models are based on political pseudo-science and are therefore worthless.
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A Simplified Calculation to Put Matters in Perspective
From Image 7, it can be concluded, a very strong El Niño produces a lower atmosphere temperature jump across the entire Earth of approximately 0.3 C.
E = K x T^4, where K = 5.670367 x 10^-8 is the Stefan-Boltzmann constant
Taking the derivative delivers:
dE= 4 x K x T^3 x dT = 4 x 5.670367^-8 x 288^3 x 0.3 = 1.625 W/m2
If the Earth were to absorb this energy flux as radiation, the Stefan-Boltzmann equation indicates, this corresponds to a radiation effect of 1.625 W/m².
Watt = Joule/second
That is 829 TW for the total earth surface of 510,100,000 km², or an annual energy production of 26,143 EJ (Exajoules).
Annual human primary energy production for all uses was estimated at about 557 EJ
A single, very strong El Niño produces a warming effect on the lower atmosphere 26143/557 = 47 times stronger than the annual CO2 emissions of the human annual primary energy.
For perspective,
1) The annual human CO2 emissions, plus some other IPCC factors, increased the temperature of the lower atmosphere by 0.5 C , in 45 years. See Image 7
2) An El Niño (weak to very strong) can occur, on average, every 3.6 years, each contributing to lower atmospheric warming to a far greater extent than the annual human CO2 emissions. See Images 1 and 9
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Conclusion
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The impact of human CO2 emissions from annual primary energy on Earth’s temperature is extremely small.
It compares to just one of the many active volcanic, submarine hot spots (weak to very strong), estimated at 5,000 in the world, of which the El Niño heat source often is a strong one. See Image 1
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It is completely self-destructive for the Western world to impose restrictions on CO2 emissions that have only a small, not even marginal impact, on world atmospheric temperatures, as accurately measured by satellites
The human primary energy CO2 emissions are completely insignificant compared to the external thermal influences to which the earth is subjected.
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All politicians and activists have been warned: the earth, moon, sun and celestial bodies will never listen to capricious rules and legislation imposed by them on the earth’s inhabitants.
AP tells us the fight is over a ‘subsidy’ on diesel fuel farmers have enjoyed. AP must have a strange definition of subsidy.
If the goverment levies a road tax on fuel but exempts fuel used in tractors and other farm vehicles used primarily off-road, it is not a subsidy except in the minds of globalist propagandists like AP.
And now the government and their press is saying that the protesters are working for https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2024/01/09/establishment-freakout-german-vice-chancellor-tries-to-blame-putin-for-farmer-uprising-media-brands-protests-as-far-right/
Did Habeck just jump the shark?
Tooze put up an article saying that German CO2 emissions fell 20% from 2022 to 2023 – but it only referenced the de-industrialization. The 2022-2023 winter was a 6 sigma warmer than normal one – also a factor.
The article above is a curious one – I guess it refers to German gas being transited via Ukraine because the 50 bcm/year of gas that was transiting via Nord Stream is obviously no longer being received/sold.
Something is stirring in Germany. This is unfortunately in German. What it is about is a report by corrective.org that the AfD has held a large scale workshop meeting with other right groups, most well to the right of it (at least as registered by public pronouncements). The subject was the wholesale deportation and expulsion of undesirable elements.
https://correctiv.org/aktuelles/neue-rechte/2024/01/10/geheimplan-remigration-vertreibung-afd-rechtsextreme-november-treffen/
It may not repeat but it sure as hell rhymes.