Arlong Park Forums

I think that since lots of voters are getting tired of messiah-like left politicians

The only place on earth that has had a rash of left wing populists is South America. Otherwise no one has any idea what you're talking about.

wolfwood

It all comes down to Sweden in the end.

That's one thing you can never take away from us.

You can take our lives but never our social awkwardness

Sparsebeard

@Nilitch:

Taxing yachts, supercars and jewelry is the only "lefty" thing Macron said he'll do. I don't get how Macron is a centrist. And I don't get why centrism is reason and philosophy. Is it because everything that is in the middle is wisdom ?

As for the environmental policies, I guess they just don't count as a lefty thing anymore.

Also you're making it sound like he was the only pro-EU candidate in the last elections.

It seemed that last electionn where either euroscepticals, extreme left or extreme right. I'm curious who would you have rather had won?

Being pro-europe and pro-environnement, are pretty left wing things, conbined to the fact that he's not a xenophobe, a gun nut or a religious nutjob… Yeah, I'd say he's to the left where it's important.

All, the while, he's pragmatic enough to realise that unemployment is more of a problem than keeping perks of those who have a job (but nothing too extreme that can't be reversed in the future), common, at best he's bringing workers laws to a level where they can compete with other countries.

As for public function layouts, the % of people working in the public sector seems way too high to be sustainable in my opinion. Plus, it'll make space for future employement in the private sector.

As for being too business friendly... How the hell is that a problem. I mean you have to agree that propositions like 75% tax rates on rich people where ridiculous and downright improductive... unless you want all business people to leave the country and only huge corporations who can afford to navigate to bureaucracy to remain (which pretty much means a stagnant economy...)

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitchen_Meeting

This doesn't make any sense. My understanding was that Quebec was immigrant leery because immigrants ignore French and go right to English in terms of becoming Canadian, outside of that though multi-culturalism would be if anything exactly what French-Canadians should be all about. Versus the Anglo cultural overshadowing.

It is for most, however some see it as an attempt by the anglo majority to weaken the french "demands". putting englo culture first as a matter of the reality on the ground and then, other cultures (of which french is only one one them), especially outside Quebec where billingualism tends to annoy the anglo majority… For exemple, in a province like British-Columbia or or Alberta, it's easy to make a case that the franco culture doesn't deserve more attention (like obligation to provide public services in french) than, ememple, chinese (which are more numerous)...

Also, it doesn't help that the 1982 constitution which enshrines multiculturalism was passed in secret whitout Quebec' most revered leader (Rene Levesque) consent in what is known in french as "la nuit des longs couteaux" (night of the long knifes). Said constitution hasn't been signed to this day, even federalists parties are kind of pissed about it...

Monkey King

For exemple, in a province like British-Columbia or or Alberta, it's easy to make a case that the franco culture doesn't deserve more attention (like obligation to provide public services in french) than, ememple, chinese (which are more numerous)…

Why would French-Canadians care about "preservation" or equalization of French with English in eastern Canada?

Sparsebeard

Why would French-Canadians care about "preservation" or equalization of French with English in eastern (you probally meant western?) Canada?

The "ressentement" of being turned from the majority into the minority over the centuries (thourgh deliberates policies) and plenty of percieved historical injustices maybe?

Also, anglos HAVE been kind of jerks in the past… Did you know, for exemple, that chapters of the KKK in the prairies targeted French-Canadians.

Finally, what's even the point of staying in Canada if the rights of our brethens in the rest of Canada aren't respected... kind of an emotionnal argument more then anything else though...

Monkey King

The "ressentement" of being turned from the majority into the minority over the centuries (thourgh deliberates policies) and plenty of percieved historical injustices maybe?

When was the last time the French-Canadians were the majority? And in the eastern provinces were they ever a majority?

Also, anglos HAVE been kind of jerks in the past… Did you know, for exemple, that chapters of the KKK in the prairies targeted French-Canadians.

The KKK (in form two) was quite fond of targeting Catholic ethnicities in the US as well, it has a Protestant supremacism baked in it that is mostly forgotten about these days. So this doesn't surprise me in the least.

Finally, what's even the point of staying in Canada if the rights of our brethens in the rest of Canada aren't respected… kind of an emotionnal argument more then anything else though...

What right isn't being respected in say British Columbia exactly?

Sparsebeard

When was the last time the French-Canadians were the majority? And in the eastern provinces were they ever a majority?

What right isn't being respected in say British Columbia exactly?

The one of main reason for french people in new orleans is the deportation of acadians from eastern provinces: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acadians#Deportation
About British Columbia, I don't even know if there is seisable french community there…

But Manitoba' demographics for exemple were forcibly altered: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Manitoban#History

Still, an anglophone can be understood and served in english pretty much anywhere in Canada (even in Quebec). The opposite ain't true despite the fact that Canada is officially billangual (not that it would neccessarly be economicaly partical to do so).

Not really on subject, but here is some poetry from the quiet revolution if you are interested:

Translation:

! Speak White
! Speak white
It sounds so good when you
Speak of Paradise Lost
And of the gracious and anonymous profile that trembles
In Shakespeare's sonnets
! We're an uncultured stammering race
But we are not deaf to the genius of a language
Speak with the accent of Milton and Byron and Shelley and Keats
Speak white
And forgive us our only answer
Being the raucous songs of our ancestors
And the sorrows of Nelligan
! Speak white
! Talk about this and that
Tell us about Magna Carta
Or the Lincoln Memorial
The grey charm of the Thames
The pink waters of the Potomac
Tell us about your traditions
As a people we don't really shine
But we're quite capable of appreciating
All the significance of crumpets
Or the Boston Tea Party
! But when you really speak white
When you get down to brass tacks
! To talk about gracious living
And speak of standing in life
And the Great Society
A bit stronger then, speak white
Raise your foremen's voices
We're a bit hard of hearing
We live too close to the machines
And we only hear the sound of our breathing over the tools.
! Speak white and loud
So that we can hear you
From St-Henri to St-Domingue
What an admirable tongue
For hiring
Giving orders
Setting the time for working yourself to death
And for the pause that refreshes
And invigorates the dollar
! Speak white
Tell us that God is a great big shot
And that we're paid to trust him
Speak white
Talk to us about production profits and percentages
Speak white
It's a rich langauge
For buying
But for selling
But for selling your soul
But for selling out
! Ah!
Speak white
Big deal
But to tell you about
The eternity of a day on strike
To tell the story of
How a race of servants live
But for us to come home at night
At the time that the sun snuffs itself out over the backstreets
But to tell you yes that the sun is setting yes
Every day of our lives to the east of your empires
There's nothing to match a language of swearwords
Our none-too-clean parlure
Greasy and oil-stained.
! Speak white
Be easy in your words
We're a race that holds grudges
But let's not criticize anyone
For having a monopoly
On correcting language
! In Shakespeare's soft tongue
With the accent of Longfellow
Speak a pure and atrociously white French
Like in Vietnam, like in the Congo
Speak impeccable German
A yellow star between your teeth
Speak Russian speak call to order speak repression
Speak white
It is a universal language
We were born to understand it
With its teargas words
With its nightstick words
! Speak white
Tell us again about Freedom and Democracy
We know that liberty is a black word
Just as poverty is black
And just as blood mixes with dust in the steets of Algiers
And Little Rock
! Speak white
From Westminster to Washington take it in turn
Speak white like they do on Wall Street
White like they do in Watts
Be civilized
And understand us when we speak of circumstances
When you ask us politely
How do you do
And we hear you say
We're doing all right
We're doing fine
We
Are not alone
! We know
That we are not alone
! Michèle Lalonde, 1970, translated Albert Herring, 2001–2012

fedcom

This doesn't make any sense. My understanding was that Quebec was immigrant leery because immigrants ignore French and go right to English in terms of becoming Canadian, outside of that though multi-culturalism would be if anything exactly what French-Canadians should be all about. Versus the Anglo cultural overshadowing.

It's not just about language. Like La Meute wouldn't be happy with a Senegalese hijabi being allowed to immigrate to Canada, just because she speaks French. I think it's similar to places like Newfoundland or the Maritimes- Quebec just has a stronger ethnic identity than most of the country and xenophobia stems from not wanting that identity to change.

Nilitch

It seemed that last election where either euroscepticals, extreme left or extreme right. I'm curious who would you have rather had won?

Benoit Hamon (social-dem), Francois Fillon (radical right), Jean-Luc Mélenchon (radical left). They are not extremists and the only euro-skeptical one among them is Mélenchon.

Being pro-europe and pro-environnement, are pretty left wing things

No it's really not. Stop thinking the Brexit is a far-righty thing and that the EU is the new SovietUnion.
And pro-environment just means having a brain tbh.

conbined to the fact that he's not a xenophobe, a gun nut or a religious nutjob… Yeah, I'd say he's to the left where it's important.

Those things do not apply to France. gun nut, really ?? And every right-wingers in France aren't xenophobes and neither are they all religious nutjobs.
But you know liberalism is a right-wing thing here right ?

All, the while, he's pragmatic enough to realize that unemployment is more of a problem than keeping perks of those who have a job (but nothing too extreme that can't be reversed in the future), common, at best he's bringing workers laws to a level where they can compete with other countries.

oh you're a liberal then
The labor laws aren't gonna get reversed just like that. Sarkozy, Hollande and now Macron have been/are slashing labor laws slowly and step by step.

And yeah I know Macron likes to make himself sound like the rough but wise guy. You know he is a–-- realist. He didn't even have a program to get elected because it's too much 2012, he is a post-modernist (lol).
The labor laws aren't gonna be reversed at all. What liberals want in France is to pass the reforms Germany did 2decades ago. There isn't gonna be much unemployment but heyyy, everyone's gonna be poor.

Monquito

I though Germany was rich.

wolfwood

I though Germany was rich.

The nation yes, but they have alot of working poor.

Chrior

Which is perfectly demonstrated by the voting patterns of former East Germany, where the far right had huuuuuuge results, just like the american south went for Trump, or north England voted for Brexit and UKIP before Labour turned back to the left. It is easy to undestand and it's been a repeating pattern for a while now. Former working class constituencies have been progressively abandoned by the left with the argument that globalisation means that we must deregulate labour and yada yada yada. So after decades of degradation of their living standards and a lack of political alternatives, these far right parties have started to look appealing. Well, gues what. Maybe if left-wing parties actually implemented left-wing policies again like raising minimum wages, increasing subsidies for unemployment, families, etc., these people currently going to the far right would be kept in the mainstream. Most formerly centre-left social-democratic parties today are reduced to neoliberals with only superficial differences compared to formerly centre-right christian democrats. I don't know what's going on in the nordic countries though, they were always presented to me as this near but far social-democratic paradise where everyone has a well paid job, a nice house, and retires at 60.

But honestly, current labour laws, wages, and taxing systems are the best they have been for big time companies and investors since before the great depression. And still we see no significantly positive effects on western economies. Most of the positive effects of neoliberal policies exhausted themselves in the 1990s, when Third Way "social-democrats" started to buy into these types of policies but with the added component of increased state spending at the cost of public debt in order to mask the consequences of the new economic order. Surprise surprise, it all went bust when this system built on top of massive debts came crashing down in 2009-2011. But for some reason, the people in charge of our societies did not learn much from this gigantic crisis, and instead of inverting the direction like, oh I don't know, friggin' Roosevelt with the New Deal, we're seeing an insistence from ruling parties in the kind of policies that led to this disaster in the first place.

Monkey King

The one of main reason for french people in new orleans is the deportation of acadians from eastern provinces: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acadians#Deportation

Ah shit, I meant to say western provinces. Thus the British Columbia mention.
Yeah I know about Acadia.

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I though Germany was rich.

East Germany, the part that was a separate communist country until 89' or so, is to this day notably poorer and less developed than the rest of Germany.

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@Chrior:

Which is perfectly demonstrated by the voting patterns of former East Germany, where the far right had huuuuuuge results, just like the american south went for Trump, or north England voted for Brexit and UKIP before Labour turned back to the left. It is easy to undestand and it's been a repeating pattern for a while now. Former working class constituencies have been progressively abandoned by the left with the argument that globalisation means that we must deregulate labour and yada yada yada. So after decades of degradation of their living standards and a lack of political alternatives, these far right parties have started to look appealing. Well, gues what. Maybe if left-wing parties actually implemented left-wing policies again like raising minimum wages, increasing subsidies for unemployment, families, etc., these people currently going to the far right would be kept in the mainstream. Most formerly centre-left social-democratic parties today are reduced to neoliberals with only superficial differences compared to formerly centre-right christian democrats. I don't know what's going on in the nordic countries though, they were always presented to me as this near but far social-democratic paradise where everyone has a well paid job, a nice house, and retires at 60.

This is deeply underestimating the particular identity politics spell that the Republicans have over working class whites in the US. And how much Trump embodies a full fledged explosion of that rather than something new.

Chrior

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/15/sebastian-kurz-on-track-to-become-austrias-next-leader-projections-show

This is deeply underestimating the particular identity politics spell that the Republicans have over working class whites in the US. And how much Trump embodies a full fledged explosion of that rather than something new.

Well, but even still, I think Trump's campaign message also worked on these types of feelings that have been affecting similar communities in western european countries as well. Which is why he won the race against more typical conservative republican candidates in the first place. It's part of a wider movement common to our societies, I think. But I know I don't have nearly enough expertise on internal USA stuff to argue against you.

Chrior

Far right strikes back, this time in Austria. Although results weren't as good as projections initially showed, the next government is thought to be a coalition between the centre-right conservatives and the far right, with focus on stopping immigration and fighting Islam. Isn't this just great.

Kaiolino

Lots of art school rejection anxiety in Austria.

Nilitch

Haven't refugees stopped coming from the east ? Erdogan is supposed to be holding them.

Femme

@Chrior:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/15/sebastian-kurz-on-track-to-become-austrias-next-leader-projections-show

Far right strikes back, this time in Austria. Although results weren't as good as projections initially showed, the next government is thought to be a coalition between the centre-right conservatives and the far right, with focus on stopping immigration and fighting Islam. Isn't this just great.

Oh crap I'm gonna be there for a day in November touring around the city.. hope I don't get harassed.

wolfwood

Alot of these groups work on the assumption that the point of non-muslim return has already been passed and the only way to slow the progress down is to employ deportations. So i'd imagine that even if not a single more refugee turned up in Austria this year they'd still want to "stop immigration"

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Oh crap I'm gonna be there for a day in November touring around the city.. hope I don't get harassed.

Punch them if they try any of that shit.

But i assume you'll be travelling through some major city which probably is more chill

Femme

Punch them if they try any of that shit.

But i assume you'll be travelling through some major city which probably is more chill

Yep, Vienna. I did hear that people are generally not.. outwardly friendly to strangers, so I guess I shouldn't confuse that with the results of this election.

wolfwood

Yep, Vienna. I did hear that people are generally not.. outwardly friendly to strangers, so I guess I shouldn't confuse that with the results of this election.

So what did you hear about the austrians then? Are they ice robot people like us or what?

Kaiolino

I think Vienna still voted leftwing.

Femme

http://algarvedailynews.com/news/12762-portugal-ablaze

So what did you hear about the austrians then? Are they ice robot people like us or what?

I heard that people generally on the streets in Vienna wasn't the smiling friendlyish sort of interactions we're used to in north america lol. All i'm saying is if I see people giving me looks in Vienna I'd rather think first that "oh this is just how people behave here" rather than "oh they're looking at me like that cuz they've got a super right wing leader"

Enzeru

Don't you worry, Femme. Vienna may not have the friendliest people but we're a swell city overall.

Femme

@Enzeru:

Don't you worry, Femme. Vienna may not have the friendliest people but we're a swell city overall.

Oh crap you're from Vienna? awesome!

Sorry if I offended you o.o I just tend to prepare myself mentally for these sorts of things since I tend to deal with racism and such when I travel.

Chrior

I know this is not about politics, but I have to share this since it is not reaching international newspapers.

A gigantic wave of wildfires in Portugal is causing utter chaos throughout the North and Centre of the country, cutting off numerous roads, highways, and train lines. People have to seek shelter in service stations along the roads because they get trapped, villages have been evacuated in various points, houses and factories have been burned, 3 people have died, it is utter madness here, scary as hell. Temperatures have reached 35 degrees Celsius today in places where even during Summer time it is unusual to be so hot, wind is very very strong. I keep hearing firemen trucks, ambulances, and police cars dashing all over the place, my house smells like smoke and everyone is panicking. My gf was on the road and nearly caught by the fires, she had to turn back home asap. Communication lines are completely full and police/guard members are sometimes clueless as to what is going on in each place. Utter madness. Protection services are stretched to breaking point and it is simply impossible to deal with so many large fires in so many different points. The priorities right now are to evacuate people in danger and stop fires from reaching inhabited areas, while waiting for the rain to come in the morning.
Number of fires has reached 443. Galicia in northwest Spain is going through a similar problem, Vigo is basically surrounded by fires.

Ekila

Stay safe Chrior, and anyone else that is on the forum that lives in those areas!

wolfwood

I heard that people generally on the streets in Vienna wasn't the smiling friendlyish sort of interactions we're used to in north america lol. All i'm saying is if I see people giving me looks in Vienna I'd rather think first that "oh this is just how people behave here" rather than "oh they're looking at me like that cuz they've got a super right wing leader"

Just think of it like that they are offering you the courtesy of not wasting your time with insincere pleasentries and put on smiles. Man talk about great people who won't waterdown the concept of the smile by using it as a mask. Man those ice robot people sure are taking extra steps to think about how their actions could affect an innocent stranger like yourself. Imagine if they went around all hey how are you hows the wife when they don't really give a damn. What a crazy and shallow world to imagine. Or y'know maybe it just wasn't in their programming. Or maybe they are just jerks, could be that too.

Oh crap you're from Vienna? awesome!

Sorry if I offended you o.o I just tend to prepare myself mentally for these sorts of things since I tend to deal with racism and such when I travel.

Just throw a schnitzel on him and he'll be fine.

We all know the garden variety Austrian can't resist breaded veal.

And once he's calm and nice again he can show you the sights. Win-win

Monkey King

North American cities are smiley and friendly in the streets (??)

Femme

Just think of it like that they are offering you the courtesy of not wasting your time with insincere pleasentries and put on smiles. Man talk about great people who won't waterdown the concept of the smile by using it as a mask. Man those ice robot people sure are taking extra steps to think about how their actions could affect an innocent stranger like yourself. Imagine if they went around all hey how are you hows the wife when they don't really give a damn. What a crazy and shallow world to imagine. Or y'know maybe it just wasn't in their programming. Or maybe they are just jerks, could be that too.

Just throw a schnitzel on him and he'll be fine.

We all know the garden variety Austrian can't resist breaded veal.

And once he's calm and nice again he can show you the sights. Win-win

Eek I feel like a jerk who stereotyped Austria real bad I'm sure ill have a lovely time there including interactions with people! It was my choice to include it in the trip anyhow! I'm just terribly pessimistic sometimes and I should've thought twice about my phrasing.

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North American cities are smiley and friendly in the streets (??)

Well not like all the time, but interacting with strangers is generally easy here… not so in your city?

wolfwood

Eek I feel like a jerk who stereotyped Austria real bad I'm sure ill have a lovely time there including interactions with people! It was my choice to include it in the trip anyhow! I'm just terribly pessimistic sometimes and I should've thought twice about my phrasing.

I'd hazard a guess that your stereotype won't even register as an insult to the people in question lol.

The smile acceptance gap is probably one of my favorite cases of culture shock betwenn cultures.

But is Austria the only European country on your current tour?

Well not like all the time, but interacting with strangers is generally easy here… not so in your city?

Dunno how you behave in your natural habitat but the Americans and Canadians you meet out in the wild tend to be quite sociable. Atleast that's been my experience. Not big on the comfortable silence

Nilitch

yeah, people usually say americans are easier to interact with. I don't know how much true it is

maxterdexter

Enough people are convinced over here that the fire over galicia and portugal weren't just natural or accidental, but provoked in order to take advantage of a new law that considers burned terrain useable to urbanize.

Back in my town, the damn mountain burned every year during the hardest weeks of summer, probably before if some idiot smoked around. When forest fires don't happen regulary, dry wood keps building up until a bad hot day, or an idiot comes by.

Would certain powerful people dare to cause this much destruction to buy land, while the hectarea price down in Andalucia and the like must be dirt cheap after the crisis? Would Portugal stay quiet if that were to come to light?

Chrior

I don't see as much talk about criminal fire starting as I should. The truth is that the entire south of the country completely escaped this wave of fires while nearly every single corner of the northern half (filled with trees) was affected. Almost 550 fires started in 24 hours is way too much to be a mere coincidence or to atribute to random cigarettes or natural occurences. Most of the talk has been about the sheer incompetence of the Civil Protection Authorities and the Minister of Internal Administration. The conservative party here is already trying to vote the government down on parliament, although it's probably more rhetoric than anything, just trying to be relevant.

Honeslty, this country has a huge, serious issue with forest fires stemming from a lot of different factors. First of all, the dismantling of public surveillance services, namely ending the position of forest watcher, and lack of involvement of the military in the firefighting. Then handing all of the aerial part of the fighting to private companies, while our air force is stopped from joining, for some reason. Which is probably economic interests and lobbying.
Then the fact that the communication service for protection authorities, policemen and firemen is a public-private partnership which does not guarantee even the minimum required standards for its correct functioning, leading to an unbelievable lack of coordination of all these forces, making them ineffective. A LOT of people died because the guards sent them to burning roads because they didn't have the required information to do otherwise.
Then the excessive urbanization and complete lack of policies for rural areas make the interior of the country an abandoned wasteland with no order. No enforcing of laws pertaining to cleaning plots of land and orderly planting of trees have made our forested areas into wild messes which only need a small ignition to generate huge bonfires. Lots of corruption in regards to the cellulose industries and others who use burnt wood, who exploit small producers and take advantage of this wild west of tree plantations. The complete liberalization of eucalyptus plantation by the previous neoliberal government. Eucalyptus is friggin' flammable. Like, really.
Oh, not to mention a culture of utter impunity for arsonists, who most of the time are arrested for the 2nd, 3rd, nth time and then promptly released on account of psychological disturbances or something. So there are a LOT of problems to fix and barely any solutions have been put forward by our governments for the last 3 decades, since this whole process began.

maxterdexter

Punctuation dude, I'm reading it but parragraphs are your friends.

Chrior

@maxterdexter:

Punctuation dude, I'm reading it but parragraphs are your friends.

Sorry, still too pissed off about it to write properly. I'll break it up.

maxterdexter

I know the feeling.

So I understand is a systemic issue, the kindle is both more controlable and predictable than the kindlers?

Chrior

Sorry, I couldn't understand what you meant in your question. Meanwhile, the number of dead people has been confirmed to be 42, although some people are still seriously injured in hospitals. The Minister of Internal Administration quit and the conservative minority is presenting a motion of no confidence in parliament to be voted next week, although it is doomed to fail, of course. So far, nobody knows what the government and other authorities plan to do about all this. Total of 107 people killed in forest fires in 4 months…

FolhaS

@maxterdexter:

Enough people are convinced over here that the fire over galicia and portugal weren't just natural or accidental, but provoked in order to take advantage of a new law that considers burned terrain useable to urbanize.

Back in my town, the damn mountain burned every year during the hardest weeks of summer, probably before if some idiot smoked around. When forest fires don't happen regulary, dry wood keps building up until a bad hot day, or an idiot comes by.

Would certain powerful people dare to cause this much destruction to buy land, while the hectarea price down in Andalucia and the like must be dirt cheap after the crisis? Would Portugal stay quiet if that were to come to light?

Adding to what Chrior said, hoping to give a bit more of social context, this is the result of doing barely anything in the past decades to deal with the problems.

For many years, at least two decades, Portugal has a semi-official fire season. While many countries may have a earthquake season, or hurricane or monsoon or any other natural and unstopable disaster, we have a man made disaster season.
And I say semi official because while it's obviously not celebrated it's normal to hear the media or even the governament talk about the "fire season", it has kinda became accepted. Yet, every year some people seem to act surprised when a good chunk of the forest burns down.

A recent study done here reached the conclusion that 98% of fires were man-made, most of them were not of criminal origin, simply lack of care.
Adding that poor maintenance of the terrain to the non-autochthonous species the wood and paper industry plants here, like the eucalyptus, and also clime in the summer we get a great recipe to uncontrolable forest fires, whether they are natural (which is actually something that should happen to forests in every few years and should be manageable), accidentals or criminaly made.

This is absolutely a systemic problem our country has but the fact that it's seasonal and the industries lobbies applying their force in the off-season has let it grow to these absurd cases (this is the second time we had such major fires this year, although last time it was bigger fires in fewer places).

wolfwood

@maxterdexter:

Enough people are convinced over here that the fire over galicia and portugal weren't just natural or accidental, but provoked in order to take advantage of a new law that considers burned terrain useable to urbanize.

So what you are suggesting is that they could be pretty much running a Scooby doo-esque land scam?

Like if i can scare these people of this land i can develop it and build a hotel or something.

maxterdexter

https://www.jn.pt/nacional/interior/quinta-rodeada-de-carvalhos-e-castanheiros-escapou-ao-fogo-8583333.html

So what you are suggesting is that they could be pretty much running a Scooby doo-esque land scam?

Like if i can scare these people of this land i can develop it and build a hotel or something.

I'm not so sure now after all of this. But my co-workers seem to believe it.

FolhaS

It's not about scaring people away, it's about taking the forest out of the equations. Altough the fires can easily reach vilages they alway start in the middle of the woods.
Like, there's this nice piece of land but the city/governament won't allow for the construction of some new urbanization or the planting of commercially viable species of trees because there's a natural and healthy forest in it, but woops looks like that forest burnt down last summer so I guess now there's room for those projects and the governament can at least make some money with the licenses.
Sometimes it may also be easier and certainly much cheaper, to burn it down and clean the land after instead of taking down the patches of forest the old fashioned way, with big saws and security measures.

A big problem we have here is the replacement of our autochthonous trees with species that are more commercially viable, usually the eucaplyptus, a species that grows fast and is therefor much used and profitable in the paper industry. On the down side, they drain the soil around them and literally burn like exploding torches, spreading the flames very easily.
If you take take a trip to Portugal and travel betwen cities it doesn't matter if you take the big highways or the older roads, at some point you'll look to the side and see a big patch of eucalyptus planted amist oaks or pines or olive trees, etc.

I can speak from personal experience on some of it.
I live about a dozen kms outside the city and there's a pine forest just a couple hundred meters away from my house. It already had some terrains next to it with eucalyptus, and truth be told I'm quite fond and accustomed to their smell and feel from growing up here.
About 10-15 years ago, during the typical summer, there was a fire in the forest. Luckily, it was manageable since there werent' many fires in the region and the proper means were avaliable. It was quite a scare but despite coming near some houses, including mine, it didn't reach them and no one was hurt. The winter of that same year, a big patch of the burnt area was cleaned up and replanted. Where there used to be pine trees now stood eucalyptus, and that wasn't a surprise to anyone, it's quite normal actually.
This isn't a recent problem, it's similar to the USA's gun control debate, it keeps happening and the governament never seems to do much about it because of lobbies and then there's a new tragedy and it's really starting to escalate.

I do have to say, luckily it wasn't the whole forest so there are still pine trees around here and a while ago they stopped planting new eucalyptus in said patch and switched back to pines, which are now growing.
There are still many eucalyptus in the area but you know, it's something.

If you want to see the difference betwen the tree's effects on the situation you should check this story, which happend earlier this summer, where a house located in the middle of hills ravaged by the huge fires survived because it was surrounded by local species like oaks, which burn at a much slower and manageable rate.

The link is in portuguese but you can easily check the photos and there's a facebook post written in english at the bottom.

EDIT: Just leaving this edit to correct something I totally forgot, but was just now reminded by reading another article on this topic.

Pine trees are also not native to Portugal. They were brought here for comercial reasons. They are more versatile in use for the general population living near them than the eucalyptus but still present dangerous risks during fires.
Like I said above, I always lived near a pine forest so I always wrongly associate pines with something natural in this country. But as much as I like them they are also part of the problem and need to be adressed.

Nilitch

[h=1]Spain government expected to impose direct rule over Catalonia[/h]

Monquito

I'd be really impressed if Separatists never saw this coming.

Nilitch

The European Parliament called yesterday for the glyphosate to be banned by 2022, which forced the european commission to cancel the new regulation they were gonna pass today (which was consisting in allowing it for 10more years).

France, Austria, Belgium and Italy want to ban Monsanto's pesticide. And the Commission let know this morning that they were going "to think" and that a new date of meeting would be fixed "soon".

Also, according to new statistics there are 18,6million people living in Germany who have another nationality or a parent who was born abroad.

Monkey King

Northern Ireland aside (and even that's been cold since 98') the idea of war occurring in Western Europe…and it not being a totally loony possibility, is really something else.

AfroSamurai

Northern Ireland aside (and even that's been cold since 98') the idea of war occurring in Western Europe…and it not being a totally loony possibility, is really something else.

I really doubt it'll escalate to the point of a civil war. The EU's in place for a reason, they'll step in before it gets that bad.

maxterdexter

I'd be really impressed if Separatists never saw this coming.

Considering how they didn't saw Europe and the private economic sector reactions, I really doubt it.

Chrior