Tuukka R

Some “fancy” ones do taste different, but the basic ones do share a clearly distinguishable common taste.

Yes, and the taste of what’s in most energy drinks is what’s being sought for here.

BBC News says it was said using a megaphone when talking to a large crowd:

Petro shared a video on social media of him addressing a large crowd through a megaphone in Spanish on Friday.

He called for the formation of a “world salvation army, whose first task is to liberate Palestine”.

“That is why, from here in New York, I ask all soldiers in the United States Army not to point their rifles at humanity,” he said. “Disobey Trump’s order! Obey the order of humanity!”

You forgot to read the end of my comment.

We are almost completely in agreement.

(Of course Trump’s rhyme and reason are irrelevant here. The president of Colombia is not known as a moron and there is a demand for him to act like a diplomat even when visiting a moron. But, Trump, Mussolini and similar make an exception: the charter of Human Rights is the most important piece of rules there is, and it basically requires everybody to behave that way. Therefore: unusual but acceptable.)

“Disobey Trump’s orders” is what he said. Disobey horrible orders whether legal or illegal.

A ballsy thing for a president to go to a demonstration in another country and tell its military to disobey their own president. If the president of Portugal did the same in Denmark, I would absolutely expect him to be expelled from the Danish territory.

Personally, if any country’s president was to do the same in Finland, I would see that as an actual act of war by his country.

This all having been said: whatever is done against Trump is done for USA. The president of Colombia did an awesome thing and I’m happy he did it!

I almost completely agree with PM_ME_etc. Even to the part that yes, you are afraid of China and Chinese cultures in ways that are not necessary.

At the same time, it is China’s goal to turn the west towards authoritarianism. Many parts of MAGA’s political goals are coaligned with those of China, even if their goals regarding economy politics are extremely different.

Currently an increasing share of the western consumption is fed by factories in China. We’re currently practically completely able to produce mobile phones without China, because even if the phone is made in Mexico or South Korea, it is still made of Chinese components, such as the tiny torx screws not made in scale in a reasonable quality anywhere else than China.
Eventually China will shut down that trade. It will hurt China, but if as a consequence China can get us under its command, they will gain more than they lose.

Currently it would be extremely crucial to support industrial production practically anywhere outside China, some clear cases, such as NK, of course excluded. An amount of sinophobia is very necessary to make this happen!

This shows very well to what extent China is communist.

• nationalizing industries: yes
• making industries worker-controlled
• private property partially abolished
• workers’ rights even less supported than in USA
• capitalist class being steadily empowered (they are getting increasingly rich and disconnected from the workers, even if their companies do have to follow the state lead than in more civilized countries)
• wealth is being moved to the wealthy (albeit not nearly as fast as in USA)

Of course this only tells whether China is.following its own official ideology, not whether what someone else does fulfills that ideology or not.

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.