Farmplinker said:

The miners and power plant technicians can all work in wind and solar!

No they can't and they won't.
For starters the wind and solars would have to be in the same area as the coal mines and power plants have been befor. Which is not a given and rather unlikely.
Second they would require intense retraining. Again its not a give that the people want that. After all they propably wanted to be coal miners and power plant engineers and liked this kind of work.
The mobility of german workers, concidering the workplace and field of work is traditionally very, very low. Once they become established and settled wich is usually ~30 years of age they will most likely not move or change carrer anymore.
There is precedent for this BTW. Its nothing new. When the coal mines and most steel and heavy industry in the Ruhrgebiet was closed down the entire region fell into a deep hole. It has not yet recovered. After more than three decades. Unemployment is conciderable above average for Germany. Wages are conciderable lower than average. Allmost all communities and town are dead broke and are running into dept more and more. Young people with good education and training leave. This is resulting in shortages in skilled labour. Which causes even more industry to move away. Resulting in less taxes for the communities. Its a down ward spiral. With no end in sight. There isn't even a proper concept or strategy to change that.
The second large scale precedent is most of East Germany. Its basically exactly the same there.

Farmplinker said:

Of course, when you point out to certain people that 1. it won't employ as many people, and 2. The fewer jobs will pay less to the workers, they accuse you of being a "climate denier".

This is exactly the attitude I talk about.
Besides the fact that it is true the entire idea to "stop climate change" is false. It can not be stopped. Thinking the one country, like Germany, or even the entire EU has impact on the word wide CO2 emissions or could change anything is either ignorant or illusions of grandour. This is what ultimately prevents a sensible approach and strategy.

Latest stats I had seen have the entire EU responsible for 6% of global carbon emissions ( vs 11% US and 27% China).

So these sort of draconian restrictions (banning new combustion cars, etc) being proposed in the EU seem really disconnected from reality. Basically risking the entire economy for - assuming total success - at best a 6% reduction in global carbon output. Which will almost certainly be replaced with new Coal plants installed in China and India.

Yet the issue is discussed as if the EUs climate plan is key to saving the world.

EU is getting ever more authoritarian and an unelected commission just steamrolls any and all opposition . The most of the policies last couple of years are about compliance . Gree agenda ,firearms controls, digital identity , digital currency , if someone would have waken up from a coma he went in the 90's most of europe and US wouldnt seem much of a democracies. A fucking 21st century caricature of Supreme Soviet.

While i believe in climate change , i dont subscribe to it being wholly or even mostly manmade let alone being something that we need to manage, the climate changed many times over the past couple of millennia that we can chronicle  in human records, civilisations rose and fell due to climate changes but these days we are able to produce food in abundance despite climate challenges and we should learn to live with it to harden the infrastructure, economy and society  to changes in climate not tax and regulate folks into poverty on the altar of climate change.

EU bureaucrats are a collection of absolute morons with Ursula von der Layeren as a prime example of inept politican that come to head of EU commission in an back room deal

https://www.bundesheer.at/cms/artikel.php?ID=11511

Clusterbombs used in UA

YouTube

Hundreds of civilians killed by cluster bombs in Ukraine | DW News

A global report says Russia has used cluster bombs extensively, most of which have killed or wounded civilians. Since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, ...

This is the usual spin to make the other side look bad. The video contains little information and is basically just an opion piece.

Cluster munitions are NOT illegal. Just because some nations voluntarily stopped to use them there is no legal obligations for other countries. It is that simple.

Its also plain and simple a myth that cluster munitions are more dangerous to civillians than conventional munitions.
They claimed more than 600 civillians have been injured by cluster munitions. In the same time how many civillians have been injured by conventional munitions? Where have the cluster munitions been used? How many military targets have been destroyed in these cluster munition attacks? How many attacks have there been in total? How high is the colateral damage quota in general either cluster or conventional munitions.
Such questions must be answered to evaluate the danger potential for civillians. Not just some numbers out of context.

BTW.: the refusal to use cluster munitions by the countries who decided to do so is based on the fact that cluster munitions potentially can have lots of duds. Which work like landmines and can contaminate huge areas. The ban on cluster munitions is directly linked to the ban on landmines. The argument has never been "civillians can get injured". If a conventional 500 lbs bomb is dropped over a civillian target like a city chance are the conventional large bomb will kille more people than a cluster bomb of the same weight would do.

Indeed both sides use both cluster bombs , mines and incendiary (WP) , none are illegal, on the other hand, you see even though much of the west voluntary stopped use of them they still had plenty in storage, as you see mines from just about every country in Europe in use in Ukraine which means 'voluntary' ban on use was always a bit of virtue signaling everyone would use them if push came to shove otherwise there wouldn't be any of them in stocks.

Ukraine supposedly disposed much of their mine stock in 2020 as a signatory of the Ottawa convention on the prohibition of the use of landmines yet you see they liberally use landmines of all types. Particularly problematic are old soviet mines that do not have autodestruct mechanisms so stay active practically for decades.

MLRS launched Butterfly mines are particularly popular.PFM-1 don't have autodestruct are plastic cased so can last for decades.

Ukraine purchased in Taiwan via Poland considerable number of these revolved drones

I am not sure why this revolver type dispenser would be used by drone designer  va vertical hanging mines  , to me it seems weight distribuition can vary even more with this revolver not to mention revolver weighs 7kg

Typical vertical dispenser

Revolver type mortar mine dispenser

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VzYQw0HbZ8

The anomaly of artillery usage in the Russia-Ukraine war | Opinion

Guest author, former IDF artillery officer Zvi Koretzki, says that “the obligation to end the war lies with the stronger side and when it doesn’t, we will see a massive use of artillery that allows both sides to appear as if they are doing ‘something’, while not serving any real goal”

IsraelDefense | 22/08/2022 ?

The premises of the city hospital after a fire caused by the shelling of Russian artillery in Kharkiv, August 1st 2022. Photo by Mykhaylo Palinchak / SOPA Images/Sipa USA via REUTERS

I will start with stating that in this article I will criticize the use of artillery in this war, by both sides, but will not support either side of this conflict. Being a military officer for many years, I believe a war is (sometimes) a necessary evil and all sides should make sure it is as short as possible and try to minimize casualties, military and civilian alike.

Since the start of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine we have witnessed massive usage of ATGMs and artillery. Talking about artillery, we saw many western countries send massive supply of artillery platforms into Ukraine, following their request and due to shortage in artillery ammunition.

Ukraine’s military is currently using almost all the available types of NATO 155mm artillery guns and the HIMARS as a guided rocket system. And the role of artillery is highlighted and praised by the Ukrainian army.

Observing the massive use of artillery in the invasion, I remembered an old article I wrote in 2014 about one of the IDF operations in the Gaza strip and the massive use of artillery in the 2nd Lebanon war in 2006, declaring that massive use of fires is not necessarily a sign of good practice but rather a sign of misuse of military power.

During the 2nd Lebanon war in 2006, the IDF fired more artillery shells then during the First Lebanon war. In 2006 there was a massive use of artillery, although the IDF maneuvered only a few kilometers with three divisions versus 1982, when they made it all the way to Lebanon’s capital city Beirut, more than 60 km away, using five divisions.

This phenomenon of using massive amounts of artillery, is visible in every armed conflict that doesn’t involve, determine and objective directed maneuvers. To explain this phenomenon, we need to understand why armies are maneuvering and what they are trying to achieve while using their forces.

There are two main conditions that can lead a country to utilizing military power. First, when trying to achieve a diplomatic/policy goal and second, when protecting their country from someone else that is trying to achieve his goals – a combination of Clausewitz's "War is the continuation of policy with other means" and Patton's "The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his".

If we take this to the current war, we can say that the Russians sent their army in order to achieve some diplomatic/policy goal that was not achievable via talks and negotiations and the Ukrainians sent their army in order to prevent the Russians from achieving these goals.

As we can understand from reports and media, the next thing that happened was, that the Russian army tried to achieve its mission, the Ukrainian army defended its territory. But without any will or power to win this battle, the war entered a stage where it treaded water and where armies on both sides didn’t have a plan on how to win their mission and an attrition war started, resulting with firing of ten of thousands of shells by both sides

At this stage armies don’t maneuver and if they do, it is minimal, close range and short maneuvers, mainly to destroy micro-tactical threats and to flex their muscles.

Because nothing happens in the battlefield at this stage, the vacuum, crated by the non-maneuvering forces, is filled with non-line-of-sight artillery fire.

The ease of using this and the low personal risk while using artillery, leads to inefficient and sometimes wasteful use of this fire. In some places it even leads to expressive use of fires (the use of artillery fire, or military force, not in order to achieve a military mission in an instrumental way but rather as a way to express anger or national feelings).

I am not referring to an individual soldier firing around but to a political decision to "do something" in retaliation or an act of governments needing to present some "we are doing something in retaliation for this terror attack" while not really trying to achieve something productive with this show of force.

Now let’s talk about the moral side. I am sure it will sound strange to many readers, but one of the moral missions of the strong side in a war is to win the war and dictate the losing side the terms of surrender.

Fighting LICs (low intensity conflicts) with terror organizations in the last decades have faded this insight. If the strong side doesn’t use its power to end the war, be assured that the weak side will make sure it goes on forever... and wars that go on forever are a bad thing because they prolong suffering and lead to the loss of lives on both sides.

Therefore, the obligation to end the war lies with the stronger side and when it doesn’t do it, we will see massive use of artillery that allows both sides to look as if they are “doing something”, while not serving any real goal.

And now for artillery. The main use of artillery should be to supply close support for the maneuvering element and to destroy targets that are supporting the ability of the enemy to control and support these maneuvers.

When there is no maneuvering, the artillery becomes the only thing that an army can do in order to look as if he is doing something- it is cheap, easy to use, doesn’t risk lives… a perfect weapon for a lazy warlord.

We can understand the massive use of artillery in the Russia-Ukraine war as follows:

1. The Russians have no will to end this war- although it's their moral obligation.
2. The Ukrainians cannot defeat the Russians.
3. Becoming an attrition war, RIU sees massive use of inefficient artillery fire used, partly, as an expressive use of military force.
4. The continuous flow of artillery platforms and ammunition

Intresting and very pointed text.

I argee to most parts. With one major difference. The indiscriminate use of artillery to prented to be doing something is what the Russian side does. The UA has only limited capability to do so in the first place. What they do is try to prevent the Russians from doing it by counter battery operations. It also makes little sense for UA to bombard their own town into rubble.

It is pretty obvious that we a currently in a attrition phase. But now time works for UA. The influx of more equipment and additional trained troops makes them stronger over time. We are allready seeing the first results with counterattacks. In the next weeks or month we will propably see larger operations by the UA with the aim to regain significant territory and liberate occupied towns.