International Politics

[Nintex]

Very bad news from Ukraine. The front in the Donbass is collapsing as the Russians are advancing rapidly towards Pokrovsk a key logistics hub.

Ukraine had hoped that their Kursk attack would draw forces from the Donbass but the Russian advance hasn't slowed down.
 

[Ribosome]

Pretty obvious at this point that Putin's endless red lines were all talk and that fears of Russian escalation or lashing out were massively overblown. 

The overly timid hamstringing of Ukraine's use of potent Western weapon systems did allow Russia countless opportunities to recover from errors though.

[benji]

[Nintex]

Woke insanity and socialists do what Arthur "Bomber" Harris couldn't with 1440000 bomber sorties and 2.7 million tons of bombs. Shut down Volkswagen.

[TylenolJones]

Ireland is saved!!!

[benji]

[killamajig]

Building prisons and staffing them creates more jobs. You get a place to put the bad guys and more job. 

Win/Win

[Nintex]

Not even the black pilled doom sayers could predict that Labours first act in government would be to fan the flames of race riots, accuse everyone of Islamophobia, release all the rapists and killers early and make plans to lock up the locals in fucking Estonia. 

The bar to do better than the Tories wasn't exactly high now was it. 

[Nintex]

Proud that we kept him safe from Maduros thugs in the Dutch embassy for 2 months.

[killamajig]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/sochi-tourists-drag-naval-mine-ashore-ignore-dangers/ar-AA1qcwmF?ocid=BingNewsVerp

Russian Sochi is one of the most popular summer resorts for Russians. The beaches are crowded with tourists. When the sun beats down, some come up with rather strange ideas. A few people decided to drag a naval mine to the shore. This could have led to tragedy. Yet, even other beachgoers did not seem too concerned about this discovery.

[Nintex]

One of their suicide drones crashed in Latvia.

[Nintex]

German government  

Dutch drug dealers

Innocent FSB agents

[benji]

[Nintex]

The anti-growth censorship clown has been pushed out. Make Europe Great Again  

[killamajig]

https://stopantisemitism.org/as-week/greta-thunberg/

‘Antisemite of the Week’

Swedish-born climate activist Greta Thunberg rose to fame in 2018 for her school climate strikes, demanding stronger environmental policies. Since then, she has sadly transformed her activism into a platform for vile Jew-hatred. Since the brutal 10/7 massacre, Greta has joined the ranks of keffiyeh-clad protesters, brazenly voicing her disdain for the Jewish state. What began as a fight to protect the planet has devolved into a campaign of hatred against Jews.

Anyone that couldn't see through her phony climate activism as just a media tool to make money can see she's now moved on to something that is getting more media attention. Nothing more than a media whore. Shocking.

[Sman]

Seems more like an anti-zionist to me...

[Nintex]

I have long believed that the leftist "climate" lobby is a Russian psy-op because they all oppose the one solution to the problem which is nuclear power and never hold the biggest polluters including Russia to account.

All they do is promote the worst fucking things like mass migration, open borders, burning trees, marxist economic policies, transgenders and replacing the flags of nation states with ugly rainbow flags. Their protests are also aimed to sabotage, including the destruction of art, blocking vital roads and government buildings. It's almost the same playbook that Igor Girkin used in the Donbass back when Russia took over Crimea and the same playbook Surkov used in Russia itself to keep Putin in power.

When they so easily joined hands with the Palestine movement (the Arab KGB) to label Israel as a 'climate problem' I was sure of it.

[killamajig]

Without getting into the Zionism anti-zionism debate which seems more about semantics than anything else. If we can't agree what a Zionist is then we can't really have a definition of anti-zionism. 
My problem with Greta is that she was talking about climate change as being the biggest threat to the world. Okay, maybe that's true but suddenly she's shifted gears and now the most recent dust up between Israel and Palestine is the biggest issue for her. She wasn't getting as much media attention as she used to and people were getting bored with her climate change activism but now the recent Israel Gaza conflict is getting a lot more attention. Guess what? Now she's all concerned about Gaza. 
 
If you believe the world is going to end because of climate change in (x) amount of years, that should be your biggest priority. Not the ongoing Israeli-palestinian conflict which has been going on since Israel became a country. Yes, people dying there is terrible but the world ending should be even more terrible. Sorry, Gaza.

Also, if war is your biggest issue doesn't the Russia Ukrainian conflict have way more repercussions for the world? If anything's going to spill over into a big mess, I would think it would be that. Not the "business as usual" between Muslims and Israel. I also believe you have a lot better chance of resolving the Russian Ukrainian war than you do between Israel and the Middle East. That shit has been going on forever and don't see any end in sight. 

I view Greta more as a prop than as a person. And frankly I don't really give a shit what some 20-year-old wet behind the ears girl with only a high school education thinks about current global issues. She has absolutely no background other than standing in front of a camera giving out speeches.

Ok, I think I reached my word count for ranting today.

[Uncle]

The anti-growth censorship clown has been pushed out. Make Europe Great Again  

can you give more context on what he was doing that was bad

[Nintex]

The anti-growth censorship clown has been pushed out. Make Europe Great Again  

can you give more context on what he was doing that was bad

He's responsible for a regulatory push on AI, digital services and more. His vision is that the EU can 'regulate' Silicon Valley. In reality he mostly pushes policies that curb innovation and protect big corporations (mostly French) that don't innovate from competitors. I wouldn't call it corruption, it's just the general idea in French politics that the big corporations must be protected by the state and are more or less an extension of that state. France can't hope to compete and Breton believes the EU can't either, so his solution is to level the playing field with regulations which give EU corporations that can meet all the regulatory demands a leg up over their foreign competitors. But that also means SMEs can't compete with big firms because they can't hire the GDPR data officers and legal teams required to meet the demands of their clients. There is very little real data on what these regulations actually do or achieve to protect privacy or protect the EU market but those against it are framed as right wing radicals which is why he openly feuds with Elon Musk so much. 

Von der Leyen however threw a curve ball and asked Mario Draghi to issue a report on the state of the EU economy and to the surprise of everyone Draghi (or his team) actually talked to digital nomads and entrepeneurs and asked them why they were not doing business in the EU but choose to go to Singapore, The United States and other places instead. Mario Draghi estimated in his report that the GDPR alone costs SMEs and start-ups in the EU 15% in lost revenue on average and many more billions in lost revenue because a lot of tech talent leaves the EU. His report is shaking up EU politics because no one expected him to go in such detail of how seemingly unrelated policies and regulations affect the economy.

[Uncle]

ario Draghi estimated in his report that the GDPR alone costs SMEs and start-ups in the EU 15% in lost revenue on average and many more billions in lost revenue because a lot of tech talent leaves the EU.

I am not particularly smart and issues along these lines have seemed obvious for ages now

the US is a welcoming harbor for tons of web-based businesses and services due to unique conveniences like section 230, which is probably why various interests keep trying to tear it down

[Nintex]

ario Draghi estimated in his report that the GDPR alone costs SMEs and start-ups in the EU 15% in lost revenue on average and many more billions in lost revenue because a lot of tech talent leaves the EU.

I am not particularly smart and issues along these lines have seemed obvious for ages now

the US is a welcoming harbor for tons of web-based businesses and services due to unique conveniences like section 230, which is probably why various interests keep trying to tear it down

It's a combination of things. For years public healthcare was a reason to stay in the EU for many because wages in the US were higher but not 'that' much higher.
Now, the average software engineer makes about $40k - $60k a year depending on where they are in the EU (before ~50% taxes) and those are highly educated medior or senior positions. In the US that is the average salary for a McDonalds manager and a software engineer easily clears $100k or more. So take into account the taxes and in the US you can make more money working at McDonalds than you can as a highly educated software engineer in the EU. 

If you are young, talented and willing to travel you can make $150k - $200k a year easily with less expenses than you would in the EU. And at that age your healthcare coverage is just not that important and $150k a year goes a long way to cover that. Plus US tech companies know about his, so they usually offer all sorts of health related benefits to ease the burden.

On the other side of the coin you have the digital nomads that start their own companies with just a laptop. They can easily do that in Singapore or Thailand. Work from the beach for EU/US levels of income and live like kings in less expensive locations.

In the EU, there are no angel or VC investors that are willing to invest millions or billions in tech start-ups like there are in Silicon Valley. You might get a 3k grant or perhaps a 10k grant tops after filling out a lot of paperwork. In exchange for a lot of stock in your company you might even get a 100k investment. But you're just not getting the millions or billions that can be raised in Silicon Valley. Whenever it gets beyond the college/university phase and a start-up needs 6 or 7 figures to become a serious business, there is just no bank or investor willing to take that risk, only big corporations willing to buy you out at 50 cents on the dollar. 

Now I'm not saying the US model is perfect it has plenty of issues, especially if you're not a healthy highly educated ~21 year old. 
But there has to be a middle road between taking home $20k - $30k (after taxes) and $150k + benefits for essentially the same job.

[benji]

the US is a welcoming harbor for tons of web-based businesses and services due to unique conveniences like section 230, which is probably why various interests keep trying to tear it down

The EU doesn't have one last I knew but most EU countries have their own version of Section 230. I think some places like Sweden (but don't hold me to this specific country) have even stronger ones.

Section 230 isn't an unique chosen policy, it was an attempt to fix a part of the common law that Congress broke unintentionally.

That false "publisher" distinction all the right-wing morons make actually stems from this, non-publishers have never been liable for the speech of others. Publishing means something specific. Congress didn't take care of this distinction so ISP's were being held liable for things that users were posting simply because they provided the means for people to post, so Section 230 had to be rushed into existence.

Most countries simply copied what the US had done first when writing their internet laws.

Notice who is getting prosecuted for hate speech in those non-free countries, it's not the companies who provide the means of communication, it's the end user. Their Section 230 equivalents protect the companies.

[Polident]

Without getting into the Zionism anti-zionism debate which seems more about semantics than anything else. If we can't agree what a Zionist is then we can't really have a definition of anti-zionism. 
My problem with Greta is that she was talking about climate change as being the biggest threat to the world. Okay, maybe that's true but suddenly she's shifted gears and now the most recent dust up between Israel and Palestine is the biggest issue for her. She wasn't getting as much media attention as she used to and people were getting bored with her climate change activism but now the recent Israel Gaza conflict is getting a lot more attention. Guess what? Now she's all concerned about Gaza. 
 
If you believe the world is going to end because of climate change in (x) amount of years, that should be your biggest priority. Not the ongoing Israeli-palestinian conflict which has been going on since Israel became a country. Yes, people dying there is terrible but the world ending should be even more terrible. Sorry, Gaza.

Also, if war is your biggest issue doesn't the Russia Ukrainian conflict have way more repercussions for the world? If anything's going to spill over into a big mess, I would think it would be that. Not the "business as usual" between Muslims and Israel. I also believe you have a lot better chance of resolving the Russian Ukrainian war than you do between Israel and the Middle East. That shit has been going on forever and don't see any end in sight. 

I view Greta more as a prop than as a person. And frankly I don't really give a shit what some 20-year-old wet behind the ears girl with only a high school education thinks about current global issues. She has absolutely no background other than standing in front of a camera giving out speeches.

Ok, I think I reached my word count for ranting today.

I’m sure she and other climate activists have spoken about the harm the houthi’s caused by attacking a Greek tanker carrying 150,000 tonnes of crude oil.

Fundamentally, it’s not too difficult to see how people co-opt legit issues to push their commie or other agendas. When you hear them speak about the israel palestine conflict, zionism, whatever, you notice they work in decolonization and white supremacy and indigenous rights to make a broader association. Some legit say the gaza is a feminism and gay issue, for reasons. They don’t care about the people impacted by these wars and conflicts. They use those suffering as a platform to preach about loosely related issues. It’s kind of sociopathic. It’s nothing new. People throughout history used this mentality to gain power. They turn on one another when it’s convenient. It’s ultimately the ordinary people who get hurt.

[TylenolJones]

It happened again. 

[Ribosome]

Meanwhile somewhere in Russia...

https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/1fjhrnh/mushroom_explosion_at_russian_ammunition/

Looks like someone dropped a cigarette again.

[killamajig]

Rashida Tlaib not happy her hezbollah friends were being mocked

[Uncle]

yeah y'know what's interesting about all those civilians terrorized when terrorist pagers blew up next to them, maybe next time those civilians will be less tolerant of sharing spaces with terrorists, out of concern that it could happen again

"no Hezbollah members in this establishment, your explosions damage the merchandise"

[Nintex]

Terror attack in the Netherlands, 2 people stabbed 1 dead by an islamist dual wielding machettes but before it got worse people fought back

[Potato]

Very calm of those guys. Should have kicked his teeth out and broken his legs.