The more money the dod pays on bombing farmers in Yemen the less money it has for other things.

Also that money could have paid the salary of about 3.000 teachers for a year. The US being willing to spend in such a stupid way does not remove from it being unsustainable for society as a whole. Will it bring the US down by itself? No. Will it be one of the many cuts that is bleeding the US dry eventually? Yes.

Extremism is usually against the fundamentals of many religions. The whole terminology is wrong to begin with.

Take the example of American Evangelists. Do they go to the fundamentals of Jesus preaching according to the bible? Take everything you have and give to the poor? Rather an Elephant goes through the eye of a needle than a rich man reaching heaven? Tossing over tables of trade in the temples as the places of worship should not be places of commerce and greed? Refraining from violence wherever possible?

In the same wake the people quoted regarding Shiasm. The Quran says you should not bother with that. Also it is core to understand that noone except Allah knows what is in the heart of a person and noone except Allah will judge on who goes to hell and who goes to paradise.

English translation of the meaning:

[6:159] Surely they who divided their religion into parts and became sects, you have no concern with them; their affair is only with Allah, then He will inform them of what they did.

So being extremist shouldnt be called fundamentalist, as you need to violate some or many fundamentals to become extreme.

“Whenever you want to scam people as a company, just invent some fancy words that sound like innovation” odometer

No, MS just wants to expand their monopoly, but “MS buying most common browser, after antitrust laws already forbid internet explorer” doesnt ring so well.

Which makes sense. Madrid is further from Berlin than Moscow is from Berlin.

If Russia wants to attack from the sea they would either need to pass the Bosporus and then around Italy, or in the North past all the Batic and Scandinavian countries.

The only EU country further away from a direct confrontation with Russia is Portugal.

You are correct. This will make it very easy for foreign nations to steal industrial secrets and whack the EU economy around as any trace of technological advantage will be gone.

Or they make exceptions that companies are excluded from backdoors and instead get strong encryption. Then the criminal networks will just use some of their many shell companies to provide just that.

Pretty sure geologists are also needed in many types of construction projects. Of course it is not that interesting to tell the 1224th project team that they need to dig their foundations at least 80cm deep and guard against rising humidity.

All of the “Middle East” is in Asia and people are neither fond of the former colonizing nor of the onslaughts and meddling since.
Algeria and France are escalating diplomatic tensions with recent withdrawals and expulsions of diplomats.
Multiple Subsaharan countries kicked out the French over the past two years.
Germany keeps antagonizing Namibia instead of properly owning up to the genocide it committed there
India is asserting itself more and more on the world stage. While it has good trade relationships and the current government loves Racism against Muslims, India also helps Russia circumvent EU sanctions.
For South America and South Asia i dont know enough details. The EU countries mostly siding with Israel in its war crimes and crimes against humanity is definvtely not helping ties with South American countries except for maybe Argentina

While i like the idea, i don’t think this will play out like this easily.

First of all the EU is resource dependent whereas the US and China do have access to a lot of resources domestically.
Then many EU countries have a huge baggage of colonial and post colonial crimes and structures that drove countries in Africa, Asia and South America away or keep them at arms length.
Finally many EU countries also have a huge Racism/Fascism problem and delusions of supremacy are on the rise rather than falling. So governments advocating for and making deals that are consistent with the real power dynamics and making up for some of the crimes they committed is likely not going to happen easily. Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands… All these countries are on a very bad track of Racist delusions that will get in the way of diplomacy and economic beneficial dealings. They already are shooting themselves in the internal and the external foot.

Meanwhile China has the BRICS going on and stronger than ever. The US still has military bases all over the world. The EU will need to change their way of dealing with other countries tremendously if it wants to form a third bloc.

It is nice seeing a headline using words like “obliterated” and it being an accurate description of what the article reports in the body.

I broke xorg.conf when i installed Linux Mint about a year ago, but i forgot what for. Ironically i never had issues with an Arch based distro.

The current mayor of Berlin Kai Wegner (CDU) won the repeated election for the state (the mayor is the head of the city-state government). He won it after demanding police should release the first names of juvenile suspects so that people could form an opinion on whether they are “real Germans” or “merely German citizens”.
Franziska Giffey (SPD) who lead the former government coalition from the Social Democrats, Greens and Left party, decided to throw away a majority to continue the progressive coalition in favor of becoming junior partner under Kai Wegner and the CDU.

The state of Berlin is governed by a coalition of racist nationalists and people who prefer helping racists nationalists rather than continue a progressive coalition.

The increase in far right hate crime in Berlin was predictable and is in line with the political affiliation of the state government. It is consistent with the state government reversing progressive policies such as making more parts of the city walkable, more public transport and a green transition. It is consistent with the state government cracking down on academic freedom, cultural freedom, freedom of assembly, social institutions helping marginalized and disadvantaged groups…

The multicultural Berlin is to be reshaped into a cosmopolitan facade for an otherwise authoritarian, racist and antisocial society. Whether people are “worthy” of living in Berlin will be determined more and more by the money in their bank account and the color of their skin.

I don’t think that “looking as Aryan as it gets” will keep cutting it with the US. They are treating their own Citizens like this after all.

Supplying bullets to your body…

This is choosing between losses, not between to gains. The EU is not the king in this situation, it is the servant who has two masters demanding loyalty and both being willing to punish what they perceive as disloyalty.

Yeah, i don’t think that is what happening.

When two people are pointing a gun at you and one of them will shoot if you choose the other one, you are not exactly “winning”.

Yeah. I had “So and so says X in a one on one phone call and then says Y in a meeting and then sends Z per mail” one too many times. If it is something relevant i’ll have it in writing. At the very least that i make notes as we speak.

Pope Francis declared it possible for Priests to bless same-sex marriages.

If the supposed cult leader of a supposed homophobic cult is allowing for the supposed cult to bless same-sex marriages, how is that consistent with the notion of a supposedly homophobic cult?

How does your sentiment differ from someone who would say:

The catholic church LGBT is indeed a homophobic sinful cult that condemns homophobia as a sins for which you get punished in hell religion as being a homophobic cult, having million of followers or being popular doesn’t change the fact.

You take the broadest brush and just stroke over everything, instead of being willing to accept any nuance.

She is describing herself as catholic though and even studied catholic theology.Her attack was directed at all churches, not just the catholic church.

More specifically she said “the churches shouldn’t be another NGO” and then gave examples as to what they shouldn’t talk about. So the idea is already that "NGO"s are something bad and civil society voicing political stances is bad. But then religious institutions commenting on how politics are in violation of the values the religion teaches, seems to be particularly disdained. This is also historically worrisome as the churches in the GDR used to be hailed for taking a stance against the regime and there is a lot of stories, how the churches in the third Reich would have taken stance, although i am not sure if the ratio of opposition/silence/collaboration is accurately represented in those stories.

If your concept of a religious institution that has more than a billion people listening to it is reduced to “homophobic cult”, how does that differ from being part of a “bigoted cult” because you condemn people based on your simplistic understanding of their religion?