carl_marks[use name]

  • 2 Posts
  • 213 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 19th, 2023

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  • even if they don’t falsely report they can omit information

    That’s why you always read the reports from all perspectives to fill in the gaps. You literally discount the “our freedom fighters” vs. “Their terrorists” speak yourself, instead of your convenient solution of appealing to mbfc (appeal to authority)

    In these cases it’s better as a rule to compare the reporting with that of other sources.

    It would be great if you actually lived by your own words and engaged with the topic at hand and not lazily cite mbfc.
















  • Show me the original interview where Merkel said that.

    “Hatten Sie gedacht, ich komme mit Pferdeschwanz?”

    Die Zeit

    7. Dezember 2022

    https://archive.md/c4ZVK

    Merkel: Das setzt aber voraus, auch zu sagen, was genau die Alternativen damals waren. Die 2008 diskutierte Einleitung eines Nato-Beitritts der Ukraine und Georgiens hielt ich für falsch. Weder brachten die Länder die nötigen Voraussetzungen dafür mit, noch war zu Ende gedacht, welche Folgen ein solcher Beschluss gehabt hätte, sowohl mit Blick auf Russlands Handeln gegen Georgien und die Ukraine als auch auf die Nato und ihre Beistandsregeln. Und das Minsker Abkommen 2014 war der Versuch, der Ukraine Zeit zu geben. Anm. d. Red.: Unter dem Minsker Abkommen versteht man eine Reihe von Vereinbarungen für die selbst ernannten Republiken Donezk und Luhansk, die sich unter russischem Einfluss von der Ukraine losgesagt hatten. Ziel war, über einen Waffenstillstand Zeit zu gewinnen, um später zu einem Frieden zwischen Russland und der Ukraine zu kommen. Sie hat diese Zeit hat auch genutzt, um stärker zu werden, wie man heute sieht.

    (Translated): Merkel: But that requires saying what exactly the alternatives were at the time. I thought the idea of ​​Ukraine and Georgia joining NATO, which was discussed in 2008, was wrong. The countries did not have the necessary prerequisites for this, nor had the consequences of such a decision been fully considered, both with regard to Russia’s actions against Georgia and Ukraine and to NATO and its mutual assistance rules. And the Minsk Agreement in 2014 was an attempt to give Ukraine time. Editor’s note: The Minsk Agreement is a series of agreements for the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, which had broken away from Ukraine under Russian influence. The aim was to gain time through a ceasefire in order to later achieve peace between Russia and Ukraine. It also used this time to become stronger, as we can see today.





  • I hope you read the fine print of your article

    Along with the usual mix of government mismanagement and corruption are two unexpected and devastating events: the war in Ukraine, which has sent prices of grain and oil soaring, and the U.S. Federal Reserve’s decision to raise interest rates 10 times in a row, the latest this month. That has made variable rate loans to countries suddenly much more expensive.

    The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in a statement to the AP, disputed the notion that China is an unforgiving lender and echoed previous statements putting the blame on the Federal Reserve. It said that if it is to accede to IMF and World Bank demands to forgive a portion of its loans, so should those multilateral lenders, which it views as U.S. proxies

    China argues it has offered relief in the form of extended loan maturities and emergency loans, and as the biggest contributor to a program to temporarily suspend interest payments during the coronavirus pandemic. It also says it has forgiven 23 no-interest loans to African countries, though AidData’s Parks said such loans are mostly from two decades ago and amount to less than 5% of the total it has lent.

    In high-level talks in Washington last month, China was considering dropping its demand that the IMF and World Bank forgive loans if the two lenders would make commitments to offer grants and other help to troubled countries, according to various news reports.

    On this point, experts who have studied the issue in detail have sided with Beijing. Chinese lending has come from dozens of banks on the mainland and is far too haphazard and sloppy to be coordinated from the top.

    Some poor countries struggling to repay China now find themselves stuck in a kind of loan limbo: China won’t budge in taking losses, and the IMF won’t offer low-interest loans if the money is just going to pay interest on Chinese debt.

    Basically Bejing is asked to swallow the debt when Washington increases interest rates. Its also a lot more unreasonable when private and multilateral debts is a much larger part of Africa’s debt pie than bilateral debt with China is