I don’t think fear of minorities is the reason. We have other optically different minorities around. Arabs, Vietnamese, Turks. On the other hand I think I have only interacted with one black person around here EVER. Which was kinda funny because he spoke heavy Bavarian dialect and had a perfectly German name.

While lots of people feel uneasy around Minorities, violence still is very low. To be honest, as a German I am more afraid of a left German punk or right German Skinhead than any other minority.

Sure, there are also Poles, Romanians and Italians but those are not visibly different

My buddy said the police really laid Ambushes for the corrupt cops and the arrests sometimes escalated. So, well, they didn’t got struck down by a drone but they really were at risk of getting taken out by 5.54mm bullets. Sure not everyone was corrupt and violent but still quite a lot.

If you say violent crime was low I am gonna believe that. Corruption and theft though were everywhere in the Eastern Block really bad, I know it myself from my visits in East Germany and Czechoslovakia and the simple casualness everybody took possession of government property was insane. A fellow of my uncle build his whole house in East Germany with stuff people he stole from the communist government. It was straight forward insane. Violence on the other hand was rather low and mostly because the cops were not shy about getting very violent you up just because they could. I remember when two border guards beat up a class mate in Berlin in 1989 because he had long hair. He stood in a queue waiting for being checked, the two border guards walked by, grabbed him, punched him a couple of times and send him back into the queue. My whole class was starring like “WTF what just happened”…

I know at least two Soviet/Russian Vehicles in my Munich neighbourhood straight forward stolen from the Soviets/Russia. One 60 year old Ural Truck which an East German buddy used to flee from Iraq in the 1980th to West Germany, another also pretty old GAZ used by a team of Russian soldiers fleeing from Ukraine through Turkey to Munich last Year.

While I once have been in Communist Romania it was during a holiday when I was eight and in a fenced hotel area. I can only remember it was kinda boring because no kids of my age were around. I should definitely visit the place again when I do my Europe tour after retiring, I guess it changed a lot.

Funny fact, “Stand your ground” is also the Law in Germany. And in 150 years of German Law there were exactly seven cases where “Stand your ground” was used to defend an violent act.

If you are living in Romania you might also remember how life was there 20-50 years ago. The stories my buddy told me about his time over there are… wow. The story how his Grandpa as a major of a small village during communism stole enough money from the communist party until he could bribe his way to the West - and actually nobody minded him stealing like 90% of all money going to his village… In the late 1990ths my buddy was robbed at gun point twice. By Highway-Police. When he invited his Uncle to a good restaurant in the capital the simple farmer didn’t dare to step through the door because “I am not worthy”… Nowadays… it is a lot more relaxed. Not perfect but the really big shit is gone. Still he thinks most Romanian youngsters are kinda crazy but most Europeans are, just in a different way. And the tourist regions are actually quite nice.

The Albanian Government ist pretty well aware of their lack of control and gave full control over shipping lanes to FRONTEX around ten years ago.

That by the way is the main reason nowadays drugs mostly arrive in Rotterdam again. Easier to hide between millions of metric tons of cargo than in a single fishing boat.

I can assure you that there are regions within the European Union where people are even less poor and not trying anything criminal to get rich. I’m referring to parts of Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and southern Italy.

Not to mention Third-Party-Members like Albania, Moldovia, Bosnia or Macedonia who are partially Third-World-Nations.

You won’t find poppy plants there. And while there is some organized crime - surely more than north of these countries - they are more or less under control and operate in the shadows.

But then the EU is also relaxed about giving work visas. Lots of people from those nations do some seasonal work within the EU, earning good money. We have all sorts of Ukrainians, Albaniens and even Tunesiens around Germany doing such jobs. Usually they earn enough money within two years to return home and start a family and a business.

Weeding out FARC and Shining Path actually did teach valuable lessons which habe been repeatedly reapplied successfully during modern counter-terrorism.

Both where heavily invested in organized crime but are nowadays toothless or non-existant due to coordinated goverment and civilian efforts.

The Best example might be “The Sons of Iraq” who helped to pacify Iraq quite well. The Coalition literally hired local people suffering most from extremists to fight the extremists and it worked like a charm. FARC and Shining Path were pushed into insignificance by roughly the same methods.

Yes, there were “revenge” killings by the “somewhat good guys” against the “really bad guys”. But in hindsight it was necessary to show the “really bad guys” that the tables had turned. As long as the overall violence decreases - deal with it.

Oh, by the way, did you know that the Mafia once was an organized military organization fighting for Sicilian independence? Over the last 200 years they slowly degraded into a bunch of sometimes wealthy oligarchic stock market fraudsters, but mostly pick pockets and low level fraudsters, at most bribing officials for construction jobs, if at all. 40 years ago they killed judges and police officers in the dozen. Nowadays they get beat up if they show up in Palermos shops and demanding the Pizzo (protection money). And the police stands by and collects the beaten gangster afterwards without minding the locals doing local justice. Works fine.

Who is “they”? Names, pls.

I never liked Tesla.

The cars never were meant to be for “Joe Average” and “Daily Family Business” but “Toys for Wanna-Be-Social-Warriors”.

Too expensive, too little practical use. I would take a Mitsubishi Space Star all day over a Tesla. Even the gasoline version is more ecological friendly in the long run. They go for €7000 in the smallest version and run for DECADES with little repairs and only use 2.5 to 3.5 L/100km and have like five times more storage room than even the largest Tesla.

Tesla? No thanks.

And yes, the Space Star literally has NO computer capabilities at all. It is barely above a 1970th VW beetle. But I tell you something: I fucking don’t care. It is a car, it does car things like driving and hauling, it is not an entertainment device. It is cheap, fucking robust, easy to repair, uses little fuel and lives for decades (my aunt drove her Space Star for 35 years and 250000km and it was only scrapped after my aunt died of old age). For computer stuff, navigation, entertainment I have my smart phone which I clip into a holder and have 10 times more usability than any other car computer system I have ever seen.

I see no point in paying ten times more for little gain at all.

Also pretty much any computer integration in cars I have seen are massively overpriced and often abnormal bad. The only one doing the IT stuff right are the French producers like Peugeot and Renault, they include the biggest package in all cars without additional fees and it works pretty well. All cars having the same system is a great bone because you immediately feel at home everywhere. Also they are fair priced, in comparison to a lot of American and German cars.

Btw, I have been working for BMW a lot. Even drove several prototypes for several months as a payment bone. But even when they offered me car for half the price: No thanks. I’d rather invest my money in something lasting like real estate, stocks and such.

Same goes for my family, brothers, cousins, aunts, uncles. I asked them what their expensive cars could to better and it was usually “well, it is a VW, it is a Ford, it is a whatever… and that is great” but when asked what it does BETTER… silence. Some decided to go cheap on cars after thinking about it, others decided they needed a bigger car to compensate something. Well, everyone is his lucks smith.

I think this video sums it up perfectly

And now a serious question: What could Hamas do to end the violence?

Picture of Hamas winning Award

And now a serious question: What could Hamas do to end the violence?

Again you forgot to mention that Hamas has been shooting rockets at Israel for 15 years. 100 per day was considered peace time. By the way, the war will be over as soon as Hamas surrenders. بمشيئة الله. أو في هذه الحالة، بمشيئة حماس.

Obviously they are really keen to wage a little war every now and then so don’t take that from them. The have free will and are masters of their own choices: If you go to a gun fight with a knife - don’t blame the gun owner.

The Geneva convention doesn’t know about “fairness”. It simply states that every combatant is a valid target, no matter how incompetent he is.

And by the way, you are dehumanizing cave men. Being a cave men is a personal decision and shouldn’t be used fuelling prejudices.

About Hamas in the bigger picture:

JLOTS in Gaza

Cave Men are humans. They just prefer to life in caves. What is wrong about that? Your statistics misses the marker for the Gaza-Rocket attacks. Actually within the last 19 years there wasn’t a single day they didn’t shot rockets and grenades at Israel.

Actually he is right about the Gaza coast being wort BILLIONS.

See, the Gazans could have gone the Monaco way, build a tax haven at the Mediterranean. They got so much financial help they could have build a luxury tourist resort like Monaco. They could literally have become all millionaires.

But taking it away from them just because they are too dump to exploit the opportunity? Nah, rather not. It is better to mock them for living like cave men against better knowledge.

88% is so typical - for Nazis it means the eight letter of the alphabet twice, which means “Heil Hitler”. Given that the Z symbol of his genocidal war looks like a half Swastika we can now finally agree: Putin is the reincarnation of Hitler.

In East Germany the people loved their nation most only weeks before collapse: 99,92% voted for the pro-soviet government.

Then the CIA dropped 20 million agents from invisible helicopters which fakes mass demonstrations and used mind-control rays to make them love the west and hate the soviet union.

In the first election after reunification the Communists got 11,1% of all votes in Former East Germany. Damned CIA mind control rays.

In my whole life I never bought digital audio or video content on vinyl, VHS, CD, DVD, Blueray. Never ever. It sounds as weird to me like paying for air to breath.

But one day I visited a live concert of a small band which I loved as a teenager. After the show I met with their drummer, gave him €200 cash and said “You know, when I was young you were cool about kids copying your music without paying. You told us if we like you music we can enjoy it. And if we can afford it, we can pay you. Back then I couldn’t. Today I can.”

And so I paid them five times as much as I saved back then by copying their music.

You think Hamas would be the one to attack humanitarian aid and food for the Palestinians in Gaza?

They did that a lot actually. For Hamas their subjects are just animals. See 06:30 at https://ryanmcbeth.substack.com/p/why-the-jlots-wont-work-in-gaza

And while they are able to fire over 100 missiles per day into Israel they can take a good beating for quite while. Think about that: During their reign they fired 2 million missiles and grenades into Israel - during peace time as I might add.

They are pretty beaten anyway, pretty much every ally has meanwhile distanced from them: https://www.nzz.ch/international/gaza-krieg-die-hamas-will-auch-im-ramadan-weiterkaempfen-ld.1821648

I guess they want go down in flames and take as many Gazans with them as possible. And they are doing a great job, don’t you agree?

And now a serious question: What could Hamas do to end the violence?

He is not just an extremist but also an Idiot.

Killing everyone in Gaza is just dumb because there are also several 10.000 Israeli soldiers in Gaza.

But meh… we already learned that extremism breads brain rot. Hamas is proof of it.

Crass

Hamas has no soldiers because they don’t qualify for the Geneva definition of a soldier. For example they usually operate disguised as civilians which makes them unlawful.

They do qualify as “armed unlawful combatants” though. “Unlawful” means they don’t fall under the rules of war but under civilian Israeli law.

And to realize who is an armed combatant it is enough seeing he carries a weapon and then they are legit targets. If someone picks up his weapon he becomes the next legit target. And so on. The unarmed combatants - yes, those exist by the Geneva defintion too - are also legit targets although with more caveats. Overall it is a reliable way to get killed while holding a weapon. Much less if you drop it.

Just because came with a knife to a gun fight doesn’t mean you have extra rights.

And one more question, after all this guilt-mongering I would like to hear what options Hamas has to end the conflict.

About the attitude of Hamas:

https://ryanmcbeth.substack.com/p/why-the-jlots-wont-work-in-gaza

The “ceasefire” by Hamas looks like that they are still shooting 100 rockets per day at Israelian civilians. Not to mention the more than 1000 people they killed last year alone. In 2023 they shot 23.000 rockets and grenades at Israel - actually most of them BEFORE the October attacks. That is a typical Hamas-Ceasefire.

To Israel, Palestinians are subhuman animals.

The only one who called them subhuman animals is actually… you. Very interesting, indeed.

And btw, can you tell me what HAMAS could do to end the war?