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Comment by intricatedetail | Hacker News Reader

Nothing material is going happen as Germany needs that gas pipe. It's obvious from the news that this hijack was done together with Russia.

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Germany has general election this September and since Merkel is gone for good there is a huge possibility that the CDU (the majority party for several years now and was in favor of NordStream) will lose to green party. Green party is completely against NordStream2.

So things might actually change. But then again, it is easy to criticize when you are not in power.

Germany should really consider term limits for the bundestag and chancellor. Allowing a single politician to rule the country for an entire generation is absurd.

The limit is not set, however chancellor must be voted in every 46 to 48 months.

However your second point is not correct at all, Germany had made their beurocracy specifically in such a way after WW2 that one person cannot dictate/rule the country. Every decision must pass through appropreate ministries first. This is one of the reasons COVID vaccination rollout was so slow in the beginning but after all the "approvals" were met they are vaccinating ~1m people a day. Chancellor in Germany is not even close to power of President in US, for example.

Thank you for the clarification -- but Merkel has been in power for over 15 years. I don't care how many interested parties and fellow bureaucrats keep re-electing her, or that her position is less-than-queen. For the rest of the world, she's the face of Germany. Time for a new one -- like maybe after 5 years at the helm.

My feeling as someone looking from outside, is that Merkel was forced to continue and buy gas from Russia because of the public outcry against nuclear power following the Fukushima disaster. The Green party might not be so eager to support nuclear, either. So then, without nuclear, without gas, there isn't a lot of choice for Germany in terms of energy.

Probably you're right, however if they win and suddenly start supporting russian gas they would be looking like complete hyporcites.

Merkel has done plenty of things without major public support. She could have declared "wir schaffen es mit Atomkraft" and the country would likely have accepted that.

The central government doesn't even want that pipe all that badly anymore, it's mostly the clowns governing the federal state of Mecklenburg-Prepommerania who want to continue.

As much as I despise the Russian regime, the American sabotage of that project aren't much better. Power to Germany if they decide to choose which party they hand control to. At least this way the American influences are limited because of competition in the energy space. With the US desperately clinging to remain their control over the European energy market, Russia's attempts to take their place and Germany's nonsensical denouncement of nuclear energy, the entire project is a cesspool of power struggles and corruption.

I don't find Russian involvement very believable. Belarus don't need Russia to force a plane to land, they can do their own state-funded terrorism like any dictatorship.

Germany insistence on closing nuclear power plants is doing Europe a lot of harm. It opens up one of the great powers of Europe to be controlled by Russia.

France is much smarter in this regard. They are pushing nuclear and successful in that. This is why Germany buys electricity from them.

It's just making an option for energy cheaper.

Russia needs it too, since they can't sell with profits internally.

From my POV, it's just an additional option you get to sanction them with if they are acting in bad faith ( again) while getting cheaper options.

That's akin to approving products made using forced labour because they are cheaper. I think international community needs to shut down this little German-Russia thing going on. If we can learn anything from the history, such alliance never ended well for the rest of Europe.

International community just lifted sanctions against this little thing:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57180674

The only option it gives is to shut down gas for Ukraine while supplying their friends in Germany.

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