The All Things Political Topic - Politics is the entertainment division of the military industrial complex

[Malcador]

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/sudan-politics-darfur/

RSF can't change its spots, I guess.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Looks like Dallas now has a Republican mayor.

While the Dallas mayoral election is nonpartisan, it's hard to imagine Johnson winning if he had come out as a Republican before the most recent election (Johnson had previously been elected as a legislator and ran as a Dem).

And lmao, someone is half-right so far.

"First, it’s clear to me that Johnson plans to switch parties and run for statewide office as a Republican."

I guess with Ken Paxton now blaming John Cornyn for getting investigated or Ted Cruz potentially not running again, there's an opening to be right about the second half. 

[Sarex]

Another blockade in Kosovo. This time it was an armed blockade. KFOR let the Albanian "police" try and remove it (even though that is strictly KFOR's job). One Albanian was killed in the first confrontation. An hour and a half later the Albanians came in full force (460 people) while KFOR was securing any path to central Serbia to cut off escape. They killed 3 Serbs so far and apparently there is a recording of them letting one Serbian man die while pretending to give first aid.

The Serbian population is locked in their houses and the Albanians are now going around and arresting people and shooting up houses.

Edited September 24, 2023 by Sarex

[Malcador]

https://www.reuters.com/world/azerbaijani-turkish-leaders-hold-talks-eye-forging-land-corridor-via-armenia-2023-09-25/

At least Iran is a bit of a block to that.

Edited September 26, 2023 by Malcador

[Gromnir]

New York judge rules Trump committed fraud while building real estate empire

"Engoron ordered that some of Trump’s business licenses be rescinded as punishment, making it difficult or impossible for them to do business in New York. The judge said he would continue to have an independent monitor oversee the Trump Organization’s operations."

first, this is so not in our wheelhouse. as such am not pretending we got more knowledge or expertise than fox news, cnn or washington post sources. however, is our opinion fox and other news outlets understates the disillusion aspect. ain't just that trump won't be able to do business in ny if this holds. is our understanding that banks, insurers and the like who wanna do business in ny will no longer be able to do business with trump. as such this is gonna prevent trump from doing biz with virtual every major bank and insurer.

however, there will be appeals and trump also has a lawsuit claiming Judge engoron through various inactions and actions is preventing trump from mounting a defense. the lawsuit involving the Judge could delay or alter proceedings. an appellate court is set to decide the lawsuit this thursday? 

regardless, trump corp goes into disillusion receivership w/i ten days, which is functional an extension o' the current receivership the court already ordered. 

HA! Good Fun!

Edited September 26, 2023 by Gromnir

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

https://jacobin.com/2023/09/trump-michigan-visit-drake-enterprises-uaw-strike

The article itself is very interesting (TL;DR, Trump is speaking at a non-union shop at the owner's invitation, he hasn't talked to any of the UAW leaders or is visiting any of their picket lines), but this quote is beautiful: "My cousins are all UAW members. Every one of them got a text message asking if they wanted to go. The organizers are picking who they want. They wanted prospective attendees to pass along their social media profiles. Trump is curating a crowd, and it pisses me off. If he wants to support union workers, pay the ****ing glaziers who got screwed when they put the windows on Trump Tower".

[majestic]

Our joke of a chancellor had a "hilarious" let them eat cake moment in the form of saying that he does not understand how a family cannot give their children a hot meal when a burger at McDonald's is only 1.4€. The difference being, of course, that he actually said that and there's proof in form of a video.

Well, I guess he's also unlikely to be beheaded, but one can always dream, right?

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

1 hour ago, majestic said:

Our joke of a chancellor had a "hilarious" let them eat cake moment in the form of saying that he does not understand how a family cannot give their children a hot meal when a burger at McDonald's is only 1.4€. The difference being, of course, that he actually said that and there's proof in form of a video.

Well, I guess he's also unlikely to be beheaded, but one can always dream, right?

I dunno, it seems like guys like your chancellor are very much trying to encourage people to bust out the guillotine.

[Keyrock]

This is about China, not Ukraine, which is why I'm putting it here, but I need to lay some groundwork, bear with me.

tl;dr The idea that this war is weakening Russia is very plausible. The idea that this war is also weakening China is hilariously wrong.

I attempted to watch some of the second republican primary debate, emphasis on attempted. It was a complete $#!+ show, the moderators completely failed their jobs and just allowed everybody to run amok; the candidates were constantly talking over each other to the point that much of what I was able to stomach before turning it off for the sake of my own sanity was unintelligible. One thing I got a chuckle out of, though, was Nikki Haley, who proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that she is a neocon in the 1st debate, parroted, almost word for word, a recent ad Bill Kristol and his neocon group put on TV trying to drum up support for continuing to fund the war in Ukraine as public opinion here in Murica is turning against it. The ad is at the same time refreshingly honest and full of complete and utter bull$#!+, as one might expect from Bill Kristol. For those not familiar, Bill Kristol is a notable warmonger who has drummed up support for every war Murica has gotten involved in over the last several decades. The refreshingly honest part of the ad is that it completely drops the pretext that Murica is doing this to help the people of Ukraine and straight up says that we are prolonging this war for our interests, except that it tries to sell our as "American people" when in reality it's the interests of a small group of wealthy and powerful people and does nothing for the people at large. The ad throws out some hilariously fictitious numbers such as "we've spent 5% of our annual defense budget to destroy 50% of Russia's military". I'm 99.99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% sure that number is nowhere near accurate. It reminds me of some scaremongering tactics used decades ago to try to frighten teens away from having premarital sex, they would throw out completely fabricated statistics like "if you have unprotected sex you have a 50% chance to get a deadly disease". Anyway, the ad further goes on to say that this war is weakening Russia and by association weakening China. I believe this couldn't be further from the truth and I'll explain why.

When this war didn't come to a swift conclusion, as some had predicted, and instead became a prolonged war of attrition, I imagine that the neocons hoped that China would seize this opportunity to take back Outer Manchuria that they lost to Russia some 160 years ago during China's century of embarrassment, knowing that Russia would not want to fight a war on two fronts and would likely not be able to put up much opposition, or, at worst, China would do nothing and stay completely out of this. That's not what happened, though. Now, I'm sure China does intend to reclaim Outer Manchuria at some point but Xi Jinping decided to play the long game and instead focus on more pressing matters. You see, China has a couple major hurdles (there are other hurdles too, but those are not relevant to this discussion) facing it as it grows as an economic superpower: Energy and fresh water, both of which they can not completely supply themselves and are forced to import. Let's tackle these 1 at a time.

First up energy. China needs vast amounts of energy to power their growing industry and they lack the resources to supply it themselves. Before, they got the vast majority of their oil and gas imports via shipping lanes in the South China Sea that go through some rather narrow straits that are controlled by nations currently friendly with NATO. This presented a big problem for them in case China made any sort of power play for Taiwan, as those straits are easily blockaded, potentially cutting China off from the energy they so desperately need. Obviously this is, or was, a powerful bargaining chip for Murica and NATO as a whole. However, as it happens, China has a neighbor to the north that has an overabundance of the very energy that it needs. Obviously, I'm talking about Russia. Since NATO set up an embargo Russia desperately needed to find someone else to sell their vast supplies of oil and gas to keep their economy going. Well would you look at that, China could really use that energy, what a perfect match. So now China is getting oil and gas from Russia and at a discount since they were obviously in a position of strength when this deal was negotiated. Russia, I'm sure, would rather not give them a discount, but they have little choice in the matter and they can afford to do so given how vast their supply is. So now Russia has (mostly) solved their economic issue, which is why their economy has not crashed like NATO hoped, in fact they are doing better than a number of European NATO nations, and China has vastly decreased their dependence on oil and gas shipped to them via precariously located maritime shipping lanes, and at a discount to boot!

Now let's talk fresh water. Much like energy, China does not have enough fresh water within its own territory to meet its growing demands, that's an issue. Now what would happen if we looked to the north again. Oh look, Lake Baikal. Lake Baikal, located in southern Siberia, has the world's largest supply of unfrozen fresh water, what a coincidence! China has in the past attempted to broker a deal with Russia to divert some of that vast supply of fresh water to them but the people that live in that area were, understandably, weary of this, fearing that they would divert all the water and ruin the ecology in the area. In the past, Russia has balked at making a deal with China to divert some of the water, but now that they really really need China to be a friend, they have softened their stance and China is in the process of building pipelines to supply them with the fresh water they need. Problem #2, for the most part, solved.

The longer this war goes the more this plays right into China's hands. NATO is burning through some of their military supplies, Russia is burning through some of their military supplies, European economies are suffering, Russia's economy is becoming increasingly reliant on China, giving them more and more leverage, and 2 of their biggest problems got solved. This couldn't have worked out better for China if Xi Jinping had planned it himself, I imagine he's had several good laughs about this.

Edited October 1, 2023 by Keyrock

[BruceVC]

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/sweden-opposition-party-calls-military-tackle-deadly-gang-war-2023-09-28/

Sweden is deploying the army to deal with the rampant gang violence  within the country, this is an outcome of the well meaning but flawed Swedish immigration policies 

@Azdeus and @Pidesco

Whats your view on this, do you still support the liberal immigration policies that  Sweden has adopted the last 10 years or so. And what do you think should be done if you dont support the army being deployed?

 

 

[Pidesco]

Sweden has had liberal immigration policies for 50 years.

 

And yes.

[BruceVC]

9 hours ago, Pidesco said:

Sweden has had liberal immigration policies for 50 years.

 

And yes.

Yes to the army being deployed or yes to no changes to the current immigration policies?

And what do you think should be done around the waves of gang violence which is caused by immigrants? Or is  that irrelevant to you

 

Edited October 1, 2023 by BruceVC

[Maedhros]

The naive policies of Sweden are starting to send waves of crime to their neighbours. But it's not in the character of a Swede to admit they were wrong. Ask any Norwegian or Dane.

(I still love you though, Sweden).

[Pidesco]

6 hours ago, Maedhros said:

The naive policies of Sweden are starting to send waves of crime to their neighbours. But it's not in the character of a Swede to admit they were wrong. Ask any Norwegian or Dane.

(I still love you though, Sweden).

Fortunately I'm not a Swede.

[BruceVC]

7 hours ago, Maedhros said:

The naive policies of Sweden are starting to send waves of crime to their neighbours. But it's not in the character of a Swede to admit they were wrong. Ask any Norwegian or Dane.

(I still love you though, Sweden).

Whats happened in Norway, is the Swedish gang violence spilling over? Can you go into detail about whats happening 

[HoonDing]

Why are South Africans concern trolling about Nordic countries?

[BruceVC]

30 minutes ago, HoonDing said:

Why are South Africans concern trolling about Nordic countries?

Dont worry about why I ask questions, if you start engaging in good faith I will respond to this type of post. But I need to see effort on your side 

[uuuhhii]

good faith are not bankruptcy

one can not simply declare it

it must be shown

[BruceVC]

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/arrest-tupac-shakur-murder-case-follows-decades-conspiracies-rcna118130

Its a few days old but finally the killer of Tupac Shakur has been arrested, 27 years after his killing and loads of conspiracy theories. The wheels of justice turn slowly but they turn. 

 

 

Edited October 2, 2023 by BruceVC

[Malcador]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/02/haiti-un-security-force-kenya-gangs

Well at least something is being done to help Haiti out.   Concerns about abuses won't matter much, short term  response will be ends justify the means and long term will be shrug

[Keyrock]

44 minutes ago, Malcador said:

 

Oops, wrong thread.

Edited October 3, 2023 by Keyrock

[Pidesco]

McCarthy has been ousted as speaker of the house.

[Bartimaeus]

13 minutes ago, Pidesco said:

McCarthy has been ousted as speaker of the house.

"Bring it on." - Man who got brought on

[Gfted1]

I dont pay attention, what did he do to get voted out?

[Bartimaeus]

4 minutes ago, Gfted1 said:

I dont pay attention, what did he do to get voted out?

Eight hardliner Republicans who felt betrayed (or whatever) by him working with Democrats to not shut down the government voted with a unified Democrat vote to remove him (note: the vote was initiated by Republican Matt Gaetz). Democrats seemed to be willing to save him in exchange for some concessions to avoid more of this clown circus show in the future, but he was in between a rock and a hard place: working with them probably would've made more of his caucus turn against him, and the very little power he was already wielding with them would've become even thinner. He seemed to believe he would survive the vote leading up to it.

First time in U.S. history the Speaker of the House has been ousted: now we'll get to see even more of the clown circus show, and what follows will probably be even worse.

Edited October 3, 2023 by Bartimaeus