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7
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256
Joined
2 yr. ago

  • The article is about political pressure, as I said, about accusing Israel critics of other crimes and thereby trying to shut them down.

    Yes, criticising Israel is illegal as you have yourself just stated. The exact legal mechanism which the state uses does not change this.

  • On Friday, the Indian Express newspaper reported,, opens new tab citing documents it had accessed, that the $21 million Trump referred to was disbursed to neighbouring Bangladesh, not India.

    Honestly bigger news, given the recent events in Bangladesh.

  • The whole war was started because the Russians consider Ukraine in nato to be their red line, and the war was lost by Ukraine because the NATO leadership never seriously considered putting Ukraine in NATO if that meant direct war with Russia.

    So no, it isn't a realistic goal at all. The war ends only when either

    1. The Ukrainian state collapses
    2. A deal is made in which Ukraine does not join NATO
    3. Ukraine pushes back Russian forces so much that they collapse the Russian government.

    Scenario 2 seems to be the most likely outcome.

  • He would have been only 14 at the end of World War II so it seems unlikely that he could have helped the Nazis.

    Ok that's actually pretty funny. My friend was talking about Soros as if he was a nazi collaborator infiltrating Jewish societies to out people. Technically, he was part of the Judenrat established by the Nazis, but he was forced to join at the age of 13 and made to hand out deportation notices (what I'm seeing in Wikipedia).

  • Free speech gave the USA Trump.

    Not at all. The things that Trump says are acceptable to the ruling class of America. Even without free speech (which the US doesn't actually have), Trump would never be the victim of censorship laws.

  • The actual unique part about it is that China seems to be turning around the logic of encirclement on its head.

    US allied forces periodically conduct similar exercises near the coast of China (with build up of weapons as well), using the justification that they can do whatever they want in international waters.

    Even Australia sends helicopters and other military equipment off the Chinese coast. The Chinese have decided to give Australia a taste of its own medicine.

  • The German army's battle-readiness is less than when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, military officials, lawmakers and defence experts told Reuters.

    :)

    If I was a lib and had to take this many Ls as they have taken starting 2022 I would also loose my mind.

    Sending weapons, ammunition and equipment to Ukraine, as well as accelerating Germany's own drills, took a toll on the available equipment, he said.

    No shit sherlock. You choose to expend equipment now you have low equipment stocks. I'm flabbergasted.

    a lack of a sense of urgency

    Because there is no urgency. Nobody in the leaderships of any of the countries involved with Ukraine were under any illusion that Russia would invade and conquer Europe or some shit. This is further proof.

    Defence ranks third after immigration and the state of the economy in what Germans see as the most pressing problems for the new government, according to a survey by public broadcaster ARD published in January.

    Fuck this shithole libbed up population of loosers. Yeah I know that's overly harsh and generalised, but the overwhelming spinelessness of the Europeans has completely worn my patience thin.

    This would enable Germany to swiftly expand its troops to around 460,000 in the event of war - nearly double what it could muster today. "Given the casualty rates we are calculating with, the Bundeswehr will be bled out within months," said CDU lawmaker Roderich Kiesewetter, who was a colonel in the German forces before turning to politics.

    Openly calling for hundreds of thousands of Germans will die. Will the Germans resist in any way? No.

    Smaller, radical parties AfD and BSW could potentially form a blocking minority of one third of the seats in parliament, and prevent agreement on new special funds to bankroll higher investment into the Bundeswehr.

    If the AfD ends up doing harm reduction, it will definitely prove Stalin wrong. Social democracy is not the moderate wing of fascism, fascism is the moderate wing of social democracy.

  • The only Europmeans who have been taking this seriously are Poland and the Baltics, as they know the horrors of being under Russian occupation.

    Ah the horrors of being freed from fascism and given actual social security nets with industrialization! How terrible! We noble westerners should increase our military spending to make sure these things never happen again.

    We will defend the rising tide of fascism, genocide in the middle east, and crippling austerity to the last man standing!

  • Trees never evolved for the purposes of mass capturing carbon from the air as efficiently as possible. Yes, they convert CO2 to O2 as part of their life cycle, but algae and other organisms have a much bigger role in capturing CO2 and turning it into O2.

    Furthermore, so much of the CO2 that we emit is CO2 that was sequestered in the past over those very same 100s of millions of years. Meaning that going the natural route will take that amount of time.

  • "No one wants to create trouble, but BRICS countries also don't want to abandon the idea of exploring this possibility," said another source, adding that no member countries intend to eliminate their dollar reserves.

    Big oof. It's one thing to tip toe around causing WW3 with the US (I don't want that shit either), it's another to act blissfully ignorant of just how unstable the US is.

  • The reason why transactions are denominated and settled in US dollars is because of the perceived stability of its value and the openness of the US financial system to international trade.

    No, it's because the oil trade is conducted in dollars (the point of America's adventures in the middle east are ultimately to enforce this). This creates a demand for dollars, despite the US having the largest trade deficits in human history (which for any other country, would have made their currency worth less than the paper it was printed on).

  • Tbh, I'm not a big fan of attempts to create a BRICS currency either. The economic conditions across the BRICS countries are too different for a common currency to be adopted for domestic transactions. And if this common currency was only limited to international transactions, you would still recreate the problems of the gold standard (a hard limit on the availability of money for transactions).

    I think the correct approach is to facilitate both easier transactions in local currencies and cross-border bartering of commodities. The former allows countries to take on a level of "debt" through net imports according to their needs, the latter allows material production to dominate financial constraints.

  • If we are talking about an industrialized country, then absolutely, farmers need to be taxed just like everybody else. Farmer subsidies leads to overproduction of food, much of which is then intentionally destroyed (by the farmers, or supermarkets) to keep prices high. If you think that the elimination of farmer subsidies will lead to higher food prices and thus hunger, do note that it is possible to redirect subsidies into food allowances for the poor. For instance, the US spends about $14 billion per year in agriculture subsidies (barring covid, during which subsidies jumped to above $40 billion). On the other hand, for the entire world, the cost of eliminating (or drastically reducing) hunger can be as low as $7 billion per year depending on the approach.

    And this isn't even the radical solution. The actually radical solution for eliminating the food problem entirely would be to nationalize the agriculture industry and switch the whole country to a vegetarian diet. If we do this in the entire industrialized world, and fund aggressive hunger elimination programs, then the question of food instability, even taking climate change into account is solved.