Tuukka R

A container container container? Obviously, the planet Earth is a container for the oceans.

Or, to be more specific, a container container.

(Yeah. Just let the buffalo buffalo. Whatever.)

It also contains containers!

And, while this is a bit off-topic, I also want to add an anecdote from around year 1998 or so. Back when they decided the name for our currency, Euro, the European Central Bank also decided that when speaking or writing in Finnish, it should be forbidden to say “For the Euro”, “From the Euro”, “Along the Euro”, “Behind the Euro”, “Without the Euro” or any sentence that includes both the word for “no” in connection with the word “Euro”.

Of course it didn’t mean to make such an absurd rule.

But in Finnish those words such as “from”, “for”, etc. come after the word and without a space in between, so they technically count as parts of the same word. And the ECB declared that “Euro” is a word that cannot be declinated in any manner in any language. There is no way of saying “from” in Finnish without adding an ending to a word, so this was something of a very shitty ruling. Obviously it was simply ignored. But it does showcase a situation where Finland had something that was completely unique in EU and got completely overlooked. Back then Finland was the only Finno-Ugric speaking country in the EU, and in Indo-European languages the decision made sense, but in the one country with a language from a different language family, it didn’t. The Finnish language got completely overlooked because Finland was so small, peripheral and insignificant. Maybe not a problem for the EU, but definitely a problem for us people living over here in our insignificant and unimportant corner of the Union.

I would prefer the veto rights being reduced strongly.

At the same time, being from a small country, it also worries me that small countries such as Finland can get trampled by the bigger ones. Finland has very close to 1 % of EU’s citizens. There is already a system where smaller countries get more places per capita in the European Parliament than bigger ones, but in the end it changes little. In the EP, Finland has 15 places out of 720, meaning we have about 2% of all the places. And therefore, about 2% of the political power. Assuming the MEPs who are from very different parties could even unite as one front in the first place.

It is a bit scary if Finland only has a 2% weight in any decisions made in the EU. There are already things where we are getting accidentally trampled: There are EU rules about having to add an additive to diesel fuel, to make it less polluting. However, that additive freezes in temperatures that are commonplace in winters in Lapland, at least in nighttime. This means, it is de facto illegal parking a diesel vehicle outdoors during a January night in Lapland. I do not think this was ever the intention of the lawmakers, but that’s the law they ended up writing.

But still: I think it might make sense that there would be some way of getting around a veto, but it should be made in some manner unappealing to use unless really needed. And also, the power should, in general, be moved from commission to EP, thus reducing the number of cases where the veto right exists.

I wonder if some kind of “emergency brake” could be deviced for situations where the parliament is about to make a decision that will disproportionately damage a member state. Maybe this could be organized as a law, so that a court could decide if something of exceptional national importance is being overlooked by the EP?

The Russia started actively supporting neo-nazistic organizations in ex-USSR countries around year 2005. That was documented back and there were news articles about that. For example in Ukraine that caused the prevalence of a nazi problem to increase steadily year after all the way until 2014 when that development got cut and the prevalence started decreasing.

Back then, 20 years ago, when there was more media attention about it, it was done only in ex-USSR countries, but it would be weird if the same concept hadn’t been extended to EU countries as well. Why wouldn’t it have been? It has worked extremely well for Putin in the original area, and there’s no reason to assume it wouldn’t work for him the same way within EU countries as well.

At least we should.

But, if we are playing that, then at 2 % of the intensity required. There’s a LOT we could do.
One thing I keep saying is that where Russians can still obtain EU visas, they should have to fill a short questionnaire about current events in the Russia and its war against Ukraine.

Something, where they’d have to know the basics of who has attacked whom and when, and also what has been happening at the front in the last 4 weeks.
In order to know which correct answers to learn by heart. they would quickly develop a network of delivering that information to everyone who needs it for applying a visa. That network could be used for getting reliable information about the situation in the Russia without the information having been tainted by Kremlin.

For most of the people applying for visas, that would be just “so, this is what they want to hear, so this is what I will tell them. I know it’s not reality, but I don’t care. That’s the correct words for them and I’ll get to visit something else than this shithole.”
But here and there, some people would figure out how much the Russian TV has been lying to them. And at the same time, the same sources of information that exist for visa applicants could be used by anyone who wants reliable information. That would sow the seed of a revolution.

That would be super useful for spreading awareness in the Russia! And basically from Kremlin’s playbook.

Maybe @jsonarray@utter.online can say? :)
(Though, I’m not sure if they read their Mastodon anymore. But maybe yes?)

I know. They’d exist anyway, but the scale is because of the Russia. They firstly give a lot of funding, secondly they do a lot of work to shape the discussions in the Internet. They put some “opinion” into the wild, then let local people do the talking. They only need to bootstrap the discussion, after which it will continue on its own weight without much need for further influence by the troll factory.

Yes there is. There is no other police force than the national police. And they do choose what to enforce.

Not in Finland. Here the idea is that such inpectors cost money, and you don’t want to waste money.
They also refuse to hire more parking wardens because those would cost money – even if in the end there would be more money in the city’s coffers than before hiring them.

They can make a rule, but absolutely nobody will enforce it.

The only thing this petition can achieve is maybe getting a few people to move their donations to projects such as PieFed.

Beside that… Well, Nutomic and Dessalines are the two people who decide on how to act regarding this petition – if they should remove themselves or not. I find it unlikely that they will look at the finished petition and go “oh, people want us gone. Okay, we’ll do that”.

But yeah: Do not give money to Lemmy. There are other projects that are compatible with Lemmy and have use for your money as well, without being assholes :)

In 2022 it was impossible for Putin to use nukes, because launching nuclear weapons is one of the only thing in the Russia where the president really has no chance of deciding on things alone. Gerasimov is a professional soldier, and worked only because it’s his job. He has no actual values in play, except pride of being skilled at his job, and he will not allow his family to die just because of the Russia’s “honour” being violated. Similarly, Šojgu is a bootlicker who does everything for personal gain and the Moscow being obliterated by nukes is not something he sees as an acceptable price for anything at all. And in the Russia you need an order from the people in all of those three positions, or nothing will be launched.

Putin could never get Šojgu and Gerasimov to give such orders, and he knows that had he tried to, he would have lost his head almost immediately. Those people would have seen Putin as a direct threat to their loved ones, as would have most of who have any influence in the Russia. That would have been Putin’s end.

Now, the leadership of the military has been restructured to be more accommodating to Putin’s will, but it’s still not at a level where Putin can trust he’ll get both orders given by the other two people. And if he tries and fails … well, read above. His head will roll. Now he would actually have a chance of success, but he’s still maybe 80 % likely to fail if he tries. And actually… PACO.

Now is still a time when we can safely use military power against the Russia without a danger of a nuclear war. That time will not last forever, because Putin does want to use nukes and he is working to make it possible. He will, however, still need plenty more time for that. Luckily for him, especially Germans are giving it to him. Ironically, because they are afraid of nukes and don’t bother looking into how launching nukes works in the Russia.

It did, but much less severely.

Actually it was. But in much lesser ways.

It’s very largely Putin.

We know about how he made Ukraine’s far right stronger and stronger until 2014, but there’s less talk about how he has done the same everywhere in the countries that used to be under Soviet rule. And then, around 2014, he started seriously expanding the same to the west, as well.

Because Germany has made a big effort picturing Soviet Union as a hero country that saved Germany from Nazis, anything that would be somehow against the Russia has been traditionally seen as pro-Nazi. So, it’s extremely difficult to talk in Germany about how the Russia is doing evil things. In Germany the Russia has had exceptionally free hands to operate. And they’ve used the opportunity. AfD is an offshoot of Kremlin.

I don’t think there’s a way they can crack down. They can bark, but they won’t bite. And if they did bite, people would ignore them and vote for other parties in next elections. Would probably mean that the right-wing extremist party “True Finns” would gain a lot of votes and would probably become the biggest party.

But also, the bite would be so toothless that it probably wouldn’t really have the abovementioned effect. Here’s why:

The Finnish police won’t enforce a crackdown like that. They have a habit of deciding what laws they care about and what they don’t, and this is definitely one they wouldn’t care about. The government can tell them to do a crackdown of a kind, but the police will just ignore that. If they are asked about it, they’ll say “we lack the resources for that”. Which is true. If you go to Wikipedia and see how many policemen Finland has per capita, it’s about one quarter of that in Germany, for example. They really don’t and won’t have any resources for that.

No recipe?

Religion != Ethnicity is only partially true in this case, though: The Jewish religion puts quite an effort to viewing all Jews as a singular nation and ethnicity.

But the main sentiment still holds: It is not acceptable to hate Jews in general for the state of Israel committing a genocide.

Nie wieder? Hah. Doch. “Nie wieder” ist so gestern!

That’s about what Merz’s words mean, in practical sense.