tThe current ranking is:

So there are clearly a lot of fairly succesful alternatives to Amazon.

Nope. The SPD defending the AFD. Faeser stops the publication of a report, which would label the whole AFD as a party fighting the constitution. They actively work sending refugees to countries like Afghanistan, help to criminalize climate and Palestine activists and so forth.

The only left leaning thing they actively fought for in the last term in government was raising the minimum wage a bit. Everything else which was decent left leaning policy was brought through mainly by the Greens. Sometimes even the FDP had to rightly fight the insane policies of the SPD.

I hope Nintendo stocked those Switch 2s everywhere ahead of time or it’s gonna be rough.

The EU has a 20% tariff on Chinese electronics.

This is not about tariffs. If you buy US weapons, the US has some control over their use. You generally need ammunition, spare parts, service the weapons and for some more modern ones access to US servers. The contracts also usually include clauses of needing US permission to resell those weapons.

There were some rumors that the US forbid US made weapons to be given to Ukraine for some time. The EU does not want something similar to happen, if Russia attacks them.

Not just that, but Peter Thiel has German citizenship and speaks fluent German although with an accent. He is pretty much the most likely of the PayPal Mafia to do a lot of damage in Germany.

The budget, which adds up to about $245 billion, was announced at the National People’s Congress, the annual meeting of China’s legislature. The Pentagon and many experts say China’s total spending on defense may be 40% higher or more because of items included under other budgets.

That is for this years budget…

https://apnews.com/article/china-defense-budget-taiwan-4ac7cbdc7d5b889732cd55916ff7eb36

Chinas defense spending is now higher then EU defense spending was before Russia invaded.

China is up there too, with U.S. $236.1 billion in 2024.

There is for example no need for the EU to have a navy fleet that can operate independently for many months in the Pacific.

So Tahiti or New Caledonia do not need a navy to be protected. I am sure the French will be exited by having part of their country not being protected by the EU.

Exactly, but given the current situation I am sure a lot of potential buyers would prefer the gold to be in a vault in Germany.

Germany did move gold from New York to Germany a decade ago. It is certainly possible, but obviously takes some time to do right. There might be other brothers after all.

Berlin has an IT english speaking expat bubble. However when you look at the share of Americans in Germany on a county or city level, Berlin has a lot, but it certainly is not alone. Military bases are also a thing, but pretty much only in the south.

Have they changen from 8 years to 5 for all? And do they still require non-EU people to give up their other citizenship if they want German citizenships?

Yes it was changed relativly recently.

The constitution is easy to change, it only needs a 2/3 majority,

Only that Putins party and the pacifist Linke have over a third of the votes. The former has a lot of open facists in its ranks and the later hates the idea of killing Nazis, because that is violent.

The German constitution is very gender bias in that it only allows men to be forcibly conscripted. To be fair they can also choose a civilian alternative, but still sexist.

Bernard: “What if the Prime Minister insists we help them?”

Humphrey: “Then we follow the four-stage strategy.”

Bernard: “What’s that?”

Richard: “Standard Foreign Office response, in a time of crisis. In stage one, we say nothing is going to happen.”

Humphrey: “In stage two we say something may be going to happen, but we should do nothing about it.”

Richard: “In stage three, we say that maybe we should do something about it, but there’s nothing we can do.”

Humphrey: “In stage four, we say maybe there was something we could have done, but it’s too late now…”