#also news: eu elections will be up and for the first there may be a majority of nazis there! | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

avo-kat · 1 year ago

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lemme check the news! :)

federal office for the protection of the constitution: the right-wing party AFD is right-wing extremist

news: Members of the AFD (+ other nazis) have a meeting talking about “remigration”, aka a plan to deport all foreigners (immigrants, asyl seekers and not assimilated german citizens) living in germany there

AFD: umm, that wasn’t an official party meeting, it was just a private meeintg??? :/

some german politicans: maybe we should ban the party… their idee of deporting ppl is clearly against our constitution... But that may be too difficult? :/

news: prognosis: the AFD will most likely get a bunch of votes in the next elections and may be in the government according to surveys

the current government: hey we wanna send bullets to israel to fight hamas :) #neveragain

news: 900.000 social apartments are missing that are needed

politician and human scum called spahn: we should punish unemployed people on social security even more. Oh we cant because of the constitution? Hmm we should change the constitution so we can do that. :) yes, the parts talking about human dignity. Who cares about poor people? Lmao

“social” party SPD: oh yes. This cannabis legalization thing we promised to do in our campaign and weve worked on for two years and promised to bring this year? Actually, we voted against it, because. Um. Concerns. Ur welcome.

ALSO, theres a poltiician whos even TOO RIGHT-WING for germany and people are demanding to REVOKE HIS CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS so his free sprech wont be protected anymore and he wont be able to vote or be voted for. Hes too much of a nazi even for germany!!!!! ?????? why yes, he’s part of AFD, why are you asking? And yes, its possible to revoke constituional rights for people who are a serious danger to our democracy. Lmao.

news: hospitals are overloaded, regular clinics are overloaded, the phone hotline is overloaded, long waiting times, not enough employees

news: the government promised “climate money” as a reward for ppl for use less energy, because energy prices are rising. But alas the money that was supposed to uhhh last year wont come until, um, maybe 2027?

government: hey we promised a new & better law for trans ppl! Now, instead of having to pay €€€ and letting urself be humiliated in front of judges, changing ur name and gender will be soooo easy! Just fill out this form. And… we’ll save ur prev name for security reasons in this list. And give this out to basically anybody who asks. Also, surgeries will no longer be covered. Because. Saftey. Also this law will come…. End of this year… maybe??? :)

news: 100 days after the hamas-attack. A whole society is re-traumatized. Poor israel. :(

news: the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer

news: the economy is shrinking… people arent buying enough. Because of the war. (russian war, duh) and inflation.

news: we are sending medicine to the israeli hostages! Don’t worry the red cross will make sure the medicine will reach the hostages! We need pictures as proof hamas isnt using the medicine themselves and giving it to the hostages tho. Some of the hostages are sick! Also apparently 160 palestinians died in the last 24 hours?

-> DISCLAIMER: all information to this conflict CANT be verified by an independent source! Any information on the war progress, attacks and number of victims cant be relied upon!!!! Careful!!!!!!!!!!!

news: Israel drones shot a car where the LEADER of TERROR CELL was inside who had been planning to ATTACK. Good thing israel killed him!!! And several other people! Yay!

news: the US defended a ship from a ROCKET shot by HUTHI, yay. With a fighter jet, cool! The US and allies started an attack on 30 milita stations in yemen last Friday. President joe biden warned, that huthi had to prepare for additional military actions, if they don’t give in. the US is supported by the uk, the netherlands, canada, australia and bahrain. Apparently ships are stuck with gas. If they cant continue, they have to sail around the cap. Some british politician says “freedom of shipping is an internation right”.

-> at the very bottom: The huthi are supported by iran and have been recently attacking trade ships in the red sea. they want to pressure israel because of the war in gaza. They see themselves as part of a self-named “axis of resistance” against israel. Hamas in gaza is also part of that.

????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

#going insaaaaaaaaneeeeeeee #ah wait nvm im already mentally ill #aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh #“private meeting” u dont understand how thats not better????#like at least theres tens of thousands of ppl protesting #but lolllllllllllllllllll #sigh #also news: eu elections will be up and for the first there may be a majority of nazis there!#yay..........#nazis going: wow nazis are bad. somebody stop these nazis! why are there nazis everywhere? its so weird!

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beardedmrbean · 2 months ago

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Swedish border guards will be given the power to search migrants’ smartphones to look for evidence of destroyed passports under a new law backed by the country’s Right-wing coalition government.

The law comes as part of a wider push to speed up deportations of failed asylum seekers to drive down migrant numbers amid fears they are being recruited by Sweden’s organised crime gangs.

Officials believe migrants entering Sweden may have used their phones to take photos or make digital copies of their passports and other documents before destroying them on arrival at airports.

Swedish officials said identifying migrants was vital if the person was to be deported after a failed claim.

‘They might keep a copy’

“Next week, we are going to receive a government inquiry on increasing the possibilities for the police to look into iPhones to find the documents that have been scanned there,” Anders Hall, state secretary for the ministry of justice, told The Telegraph.

“When you tear up your passport, you might keep a copy or a photo in your phone because sooner or later you might need it. This will give the legal basis to make it possible to look for them.”

The government expects the law to enter into force in 2025-26 after a consultation period.

Sweden now says there are more emigrants than immigrants for the first time in 50 years after toughening asylum rules since Ulf Kristersson took power as prime minister in 2022.

His conservative coalition is propped up by the hard-Right Sweden Democrats, which was partly founded by Nazi sympathisers and remains formally outside of government despite coming second in a 2022 election dominated by fears over migration and crime.

“We signed up for a very detailed agreement, both in terms of law enforcement and migration,” Mr Hall said.

“The Sweden Democrats have more or less full insight into what we are doing. We are constantly having meetings with them, telling them where we are implementing.”

He pointed out that despite the uproar over the cooperation with the Sweden Democrats, the opposition Social Democrats had not voted against a single migration measure brought forward by the government.

“There was much ado about nothing,” he said before adding that the Sweden Democrats were being encouraged to be more responsible through their brushes with government.

Mr Hall was in London this week to brief UK government officials on Sweden’s crackdown.

Other measures include boosting voluntary repatriation, as well as deportations.

Naturalised citizens and families of migrants could be offered money to leave the country as part of a voluntary return scheme that already offers refugees about £720 and travel costs.

As a rule, asylum seekers should live in reception centres or return centres rather than private housing.

The government has also introduced rules making it possible to strip serious criminals or terrorists with dual nationalities of their Swedish nationality.

Accepted refugees are also no longer granted permanent residence as a matter of course. Instead, their claim is reviewed every three years.

Sweden is among EU member states calling for tougher rules to make deporting failed asylum seekers easier.

Increasing numbers of claims are being made by migrants arriving in the bloc legally in airports before destroying their papers.

In 2015, 13 per cent of all asylum claims in the EU were made in Sweden but that was down to 2 per cent in 2023. In 2023, Sweden received 12,600 asylum applications, which is lower than in 2020, and is expected to be the lowest since 1997.

#nunyas news #might do some good who knows

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mariacallous · 10 months ago

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As 400 million Europeans get set to elect 720 EU parliamentarians in June, polls are predicting big gains for right-wing populists. As a result, for the first time since the European Parliament was directly elected in 1979, it is expected to have a solid majority on the right. This will mark a “sharp right turn” for Europe, the European Council of Foreign Affairs (ECFR) recently noted. The consequences for European politics and policy are already coming into view.

The center-right European People’s Party (EPP) and the left-leaning Socialists and Democrats party (S&D) are again expected to finish in first and second place, although both may lose a handful of seats. The EU’s far-right groups, Identity and Democracy (ID) and the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), will improve their tally mainly at the expense of liberals and Greens. According to ECFR, populists are likely to be the top vote-getter in nine countries, including Austria, the Netherlands, France, Hungary, Poland, and Italy. In nine others, including Spain and Germany, they could emerge as strong second or third-place contenders.

ID—which includes the main anti-immigrant and Eurosceptic parties in Germany (Alternative for Deutschland or AfD), France (National Rally), and Italy (the League or Lega)—is likely to become the EU parliament’s third-largest group after elections are held between June 6 and 9. The ECR is led by Georgia Meloni, Italy’s prime minister and leader of the post-fascist Brothers of Italy party, and is home to Sweden’s Sweden Democrats and Poland’s Law and Justice party (PiS). If authoritarian Hungarian leader Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party, a member of the EPP until a few years ago, joins the ECR as expected, the far-right could claim a quarter of the total seats.

Political machinations already seem to be underway among some establishment parties to create cooperation with this newly powerful bloc. Experts say if the EPP, the strongest conservative party in the EU, welcomes far-right politicians in its fold or co-opts their policies, as it has lately been accused of, the balance of power in Europe will decisively shift to the right and have major implications for not just the EU’s common agenda but may also influence how member states decide critical policies.

“I think in our campaign we will ask the EPP to be pragmatic, to pick the alternative to a center-left majority,” Marco Campomenosi, a Lega politician and the head of the Italian delegation in ID, told Foreign Policy.

Experts say any such shift will have major implications for the EU as a whole, tainting its recent promises to pursue a humane migration policy and to establish rule of law at home that encourages democratic checks and balances. An empowered far-right may also keep coordination on a common defense policy to the bare minimum in the face of a looming threat from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The EU’s flagship Green Deal climate framework, which has set a goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, is also at stake, as the populists try to push the EU to erode its commitment to renewable energy development and other climate policies.

Charlie Weimers, a member of the far-right Sweden Democrats that supports Sweden’s minority center-right government, said, his party’s priority is to push for a “Migration Pact 2.0,” with more stringent measures to stop the influx of immigrants than already listed in the new migration pact. “We need to stop asylum,” he told FP over the phone. “We need breathing space to deal with the immigrants already here otherwise we can never catch up.”

Lega’s Campomenosi said, “it’s not about the money” but about the “trouble” immigrants make. (Under the new migration pact an EU member state which refuses to accept an asylum seeker should pay a sum of 20,000 euros to an EU fund.) “If there are too many immigrants they can’t be integrated,” he added.

Three far-right parliamentarians told FP that with bigger numbers in Parliament they will be able to apply more pressure on the EU commissioner to throw out or dilute the green deal.

It “needs to go away,” Joachim Kuhs, the acting head of the AfD delegation in EU which is polling as the second strongest party in Germany, told FP in his office in the parliament. “It should be repealed and replaced,” Weimers added.

The liberal groups say the center-right has strengthened the far-right by co-opting its policies and forming alliances in individual member states.

Pedro Marques, a vice president of the S&D group, said the EPP parties have been “eroding the Cordon Sanitaire,” erected to keep the far-right out of governments and important positions. “The EPP is dancing with the far right,” he added, with grave consequences for the future of the union.

The cordon sanitaire is crumbling in many European nations. In Italy, the far-right is in power, in Sweden the center-right government is backed by the far-right. In Austria, center-right and far-right have been in a coalition, and the latter is polling ahead of all others in the run up to national elections. In France, Marine Le Pen is leading the polls, and in Germany, the conservatives have hinted at future cooperation at a regional level with the far-right AfD.

The legitimization of the far-right isn’t limited to member states. Ursula Von Der Leyen, a member of the EPP and EU commissioner, has alluded to Meloni’s inclusion in her grouping. She said it wasn’t clear which parties will remain in the ECR after the elections and which will leave, and “join EPP.”

Hans Kundnani, writer of a book called Eurowhiteness, said the boundaries between the ID, ECR and the EPP have always been “very fluid.”

“As soon as Meloni indicated she won’t be disruptive in the Eurozone, that she won’t be pro-Russian, centrist pro-European EPP said that’s great, we don’t mind,” Kundnani said. “The center right has no problem with far-right at all, they just have a problem with those who are Eurosceptic.”

Experts say Von Der Leyen has often backed off on key policies to appease the far-right. Just over the last few months as the farmers protested against the provisions of the green deal, the far-right found another issue to mobilize against mainstream parties. During election season, Von Der Leyen quickly conceded and granted several concessions to the agriculture sector that will affect the 2050 net zero target.

The best example of how the EU commissioner validated the far-right’s worldview, Kundnani argued, was when she created a post for an EU commissioner to promote a European way of life.

“The big theme of the European far-right is that the immigrants threaten European civilization,” he said. When Von Der Leyen created the position, she framed “immigration as a threat to the European way of life,” and in doing so legitimized the far-right.

It is unclear if co-opting the far-right’s talking points benefits the center right in keeping their traditional voters from moving towards populists, but there is an emerging consensus that it strengthens the radical right in the longer run. For its part, the far-right has moderated its own positions on many issues to appeal to the voters more to the center. The far-right parties say they are no longer calling for an exit from the EU, but merely to reform it from within. They say they back Ukraine and not Putin.

Many parties on the far-right advocate return of border controls in violation of the EU’s founding principle of free movement of people and goods. Last year, the AfD described the EU as a “failed project,’’ while Sweden Democrats said they had “good reasons to seriously reevaluate our membership in the union.” There is still a lingering suspicion that the rank-and-file members of the far-right parties harbor sympathy for Putin. Last month, Lega’s leader Matteo Salvini deflected when asked if he blamed Putin for Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s sudden death.

The parliamentarians of the ID and ECR with whom FP spoke expressly rejected Von Der Leyen’s proposal to appoint a dedicated defense commissioner to improve coordination among member states on matters of defense.

“We say that we want to manage immigration in a humane way, we can do better to manage the borders,” added Marques of the S&D. In response to the far-right’s demand to externalize the screening of asylum seekers, he said it was difficult to find credible partners. “We did this agreement with the Tunisian authorities, but when we tried to go there to check the conditions, to see how European money will be spent, they said we don’t want your agreement anymore. These have to be credible partnerships.”

The center-left S&D party simply dismisses the moderated stances of far-right parties as a charade. They believe the far-right simply wants the benefits of being in the union, not the costs that sometimes come with upholding its values. “They want an EU without the rule of law, without humanity,” Marques said. “That’s not what we built after the Second World War. They want to change the EU into something that it isn’t. Their values are not European.”

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echo600 · 1 year ago

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Ok holy Sweet Honey Iced Tea a LOT has happened today and is not even over yet i think.

First the waystones around spaw where missing, that weird forniture apeard, than the eggs come back all dirty and aperantly more cracked even Pomme and probably Richas. So lets go i have a lot to say about that

At first i again though it was Q!BBH messing with Q!Forever's goverment, but as the day when on i just started to have the felling it wasn't that, because more stuff started to happen and it can't be a coinsidance. So quick recap:

Q!Fit and Q!Tubbo went to take care of Chayanne and notice that he was diferent, all dirty, more cracked and if u notice his duck floatie was kinda messed up too, beside the fact that he was tired and scared and couldn't remember how was his night. Then they found some furniture around Q!Fit's base that have being placed as numbers and in a patter of white and black. At the same time Quackity Studios posted a tweet of a lot of number that CC!Cellbit's discord solved forming the word "Tomorrow"

Skipping foward Pomme, Q!Antoine, and Q!BBH found out that if you get the number that the forniture was placed in the alfabetical order of the members base that they where found, it would form the frase "Eu te vejo" "I see You" in portuguese, at the same time that Q!Forever also was able to solve it, and then confirming it to them.

Puting all of that together it will form the santance "I see you tomorrow" or "i will see you tomorrow" it may meen that the person that CC!Forever chose and the unknow ice person may come tomorrow since it a santence i portugese and a word in english. Later Q!Cellbit was able to solve the other part of the enigma getting the frase " Viva la revolucion" that may mean that the person behind this is a spanish speaker.

Now to the egg problem Chayanne Pomme Dapper and Tallulah where tired dirty, cracked and they didn't know why, beside the fact that Richas wasn't woke up and that is very weird of him, my theory is that:

1 the eggs are the one's behind it all while either in a sleep-walking kinda way or in a someone was controling them kinda way. Either way they don't remember but have the feeling they've done something wrong, they are tired because they were awake all night doing it and was a not so easy job, thats why they were dirty and cracked

2 they were used to make new eggs just like i think they were in the first time they were kidnaped when the BR'S showed up, and the reason to that is because since the other new participants are coming they will all finaly be able to get new egg

I also stell think that is just like the eventes that were happening in the elections, were the cadidates were being attacked, not something especificly done by the federation but just the admins traying to add some drama to the series, it stell could be them or someone else like the codes its pretty posible as well

I also stell don't know why Richas would lie about Q!BBH being the one stealing the forniture yesterday, neither is know what he wroted to Q!Pac and Q!Cellbit it may be something personal like Ricardão had to do something that is why Richas didn't woke up until now but we may bever know

#sorry that was really long #qsmp #qsmp character analysis #qsmp lore #qsmp theory #qsmp recap #qsmp cellbit #qsmp badboyhalo #qsmp eggs #qsmp forever #qsmp fitmc #qsmp tubbo #qsmp chayanne #qsmp richarlyson #qsmp pomme #qsmp tallulah #qsmp dapper

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rum-inspector · 10 months ago

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You remember 2017? What passing FOSTA/SESTA did to the Internet? Tumblr was never same was it. How legislation in one country, the one that controls most of our Web the Internet changed as a whole

They passed an even worse bill didn't they (masked in media as "tiktok ban" to try to downplay it)

If FOSTA/SESTA took dicks and boobs from your feed - it did a lot more actual harm to marginalized people but I am trying to find an angle people here would understand - the new one gives loopholes to cencor all LGBT content (as cr1stof4scists in power in USA deem it inherently sexual and do not tell me"republicans are soo bad but de... NO this bill had bipartisan support meaning both parties support this!) not to mention it gives them tools to cencor and control more - how fast pro-palestina rhetoric got seen must have scared them, your empire is scared of people talking to each other and seeing past their tailored propaganda.

On top, it gives tools for your governemnt to infringe your privacy even more and keep tabs on what you do online.. In a country that puts women who had miscarriages in jail, even joking about abortions becomes dangerous.

And Europeans, stop being smug. This is not "dumb americans" this is capitalism leading to (chr1sto)fascism. Europe is not far behind. This will seep in the Internet as a whole as it did with earlier legislation. There are also powerful lobbyists in EU trying to crumble privacy laws as it is indeed the USA not China that wants access to your private information and as it serves the capital, they got humongous amount of money to lobby and corruption is rampant. There is also very big chance the next elections may see the far right coalition in power in EU. We are not safe either.

What can you do? Be active. Call & mail your MPs share your concerns. Talk to people around you. Voting alone does nothing, you got to keep the pressure up between elections. EU people, find a party that is not the worst and then canditate that knows and is knowledgeable and back them up. Or get knowledgeable yourself and help canditates understand how important internet privacy and freedom is. The other side has money to lobby, but if enough of us has a few minutes time... There are far bigger things at stake here on top of anti-internet thing (like racism, supporting genocide and warmongering) but it is all connected and realist in me understands in the current state of europe you are more likely to get elected focused on privacy&freedom than peace&humanitarian issues.

Not the best article as it downplays it into tiktok ban and leaves out lot of stuff but one i had at hand as it was one of the first reporting of it:

#stop KOSA #internet censorship #internet privacy #internet freedom

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autogeneratedkahootnickname · 2 years ago

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Ok stuff's been happening in the world of UK politics and I need to share it with you before I scream.

So first, some important context. Way back in the 1920s when Ireland left the UK, the province of Ulster, by this point predominantly Protestant, remained, splitting from the rest of the nation. However, as is always the case with partition, it wasn't a clean break: people got stuck on sides of the border they weren't necessarily happy with, and over time, historical political and cultural divides were exacerbated by a new concrete separation that culminated in the Troubles, a period of violence in NI between the 1970s and the 1990s as radical nationalists (the IRA) clashed with the UK military over control of the region. This was largely ended in 1998 by the Good Friday Agreement, tearing down the hard border across Ireland and facilitating free movement of goods and people. In order to preserve the peace, a power sharing mechanism was implemented in Stormont (NI's assembly) whereby the government had to consist of two equal and codependent parties. The first minister was from the party who won the elections, the deputy minister was from the opposition, etc. This system worked well enough at suppressing Unionist/Nationalist tensions for about 20 years and was considered one of the greatest diplomatic achievements of British and Irish history.

Flash forward to 2016, and the UK votes to leave the EU. Overall. Within the nations, it's a different story, and while Scotland's desire to remain gets most of the press, Northern Ireland also voted disproportionately to remain. And as the Conservatives would discover, they kind of had to.

Because you see, a big part of the reason why the Good Friday Agreement worked is because both parties were EU members, so they were already part of the Single Market, meaning free movement of goods and services wasn't an issue since it was already European policy. Now Britain wants to leave the Single Market, we have an issue.

If you were looking at memes around 2017, you'll be familiar with the term 'Hard Brexit'. What that means is the UK is fully cut out of all the various levels of EU membership: the free trade, the external tariffs and, most importantly, the regulatory framework of the Single Market that allows goods to be easily traded across borders. As you may also know, the EU takes regulation very seriously, so ensuring imports are up to code is a lengthy and time-intensive process. If Britain wants a Hard Brexit, and they're cut out of the Single Market, there has to be a point where goods being traded in and out of countries still in the framework are checked. Say, for instance, in Ireland.

One problem: this entails a hard border. Not for people, perhaps, but for products, and people need products to make a living. On top of that as well, Northern Ireland would be cut out of the free trade area and potentially face massive import duties, massively increasing costs and threatening demand. Even on a symbolic level, its a firm dividing line across Ireland. And the Good Friday Agreement is very clear about the No Borders thing because Look What Happened The Last Time There Was A Border. If the Conservatives try and surround the UK with a hard customs border, Northern Ireland will fall.

But the alternative is either not having a Hard Brexit, the entire point of their manifesto, which would be political suicide, or leaving Northern Ireland behind basically in the EU, creating a border not across Ireland but across the UK. And if that happens, Northern Ireland will fall because of the radical unionists.

(Alternatively the solution was 'No Brexit in the first place' but too late for that now ig.)

David Cameron resigns before having to sort this out. Theresa May spends her entire premiership trying to sort this out while part of a coalition with the DUP (the leading Unionist party, at this point the largest party in Stormont and basically NI's Tories) and she can't, forcing her resignation. Then Boris Johnson comes along and finds a 'temporary' solution to get the paperwork signed: put the border between Great Britain and Norther Ireland, keeping Good Friday intact, until they can find a better way. Until then, Northern Ireland abides by EU trade regulation and future amendments: the Northern Ireland Protocol. And they wait. And they wait. And they don't.

As this shitshow is going down, Northern Ireland is getting increasingly tired of Westminster's routine (and the DUP's dumpster fire coalition attempt) and pivots towards new kid on the block, the party of compromise, Alliance. The Nationalists, led by Sinn Fein, lose votes through this too, but to a far lesser degree. DUP loses 10% of the vote share in the 2017 election, putting them and Sinn Fein neck and neck.

And in 2022, for the first time, Sinn Fein wins Stormont. The nationalists are in power in Northern Ireland. Or rather, they're half in power.

Because as we established, Northern Ireland has a power sharing system. And the DUP have boycotted Stormont. They aren't happy with the potential of being pulled away from the UK, so they decide if they can't have NI, no-one can. By refusing to participate in the coalition government, the Sinn Fein half is prohibited from governing alone, forcing the government into shutdown.

That shutdown has lasted for a year.

This happened around the time Boris Johnson started sinking over Partygate, followed by whatever the fuck happened with Truss, so NI got overshadowed in the news cycle but over the course of 2022, order has been breaking down in Northern Ireland as radical unionists begin to stir trouble. Indeed, it looks like Northern Ireland is heading straight back to the Troubles, and no-one seems to want to do anything to fix it. In fact, the Conservatives seem to want to declare war with the EU through a proposed override of the Protocol, dismantling decades of diplomatic hard work and plunging the continent into anarchy.

In October, Rishi Sunak is 'elected' Prime Minister, and he sets out to solve the Northern Irish issue. For all her many faults, Truss was pretty cordial with Europe, and Sunak continued that trend well into his premiership. Combined with the looming threat of Russia over European stability, the EU is in a compromising mood, and agrees to help work out a new system that tears down the border between the UK and Ireland. The plan is: separate goods going to Northern Ireland and goods going to the EU. Why it took them 7 years to sort that out I don't know but huzzah, a solution. But on top of this, they also implement the Stormont Brake: whereas before, EU law applies automatically in Northern Ireland, Stormont can veto proposed amendments from applying in Northern Ireland if they're too radical. This is a hugely generous concession by the EU since this is a major compromise on a lot of their core principles, since Northern Ireland is now part of the Single Market but theoretically exempt from following it, and by extension a huge win for Rishi Sunak. While the DUP have lost all credibility, this will hopefully be enough to get them back into Stormont. This new arrangement is called the Windsor Framework, and buries the final major hatchet in the Brexit divorce proceedings.

OK, LENGTHY context complete, lets discuss what's happened. Because turns out, there's opposition to this new framework.

Who from?

WHY ITS BORIS JOHNSON AND THE CHUCKLEFUCKS.

Basically, leading members of the Johnsonian and Trussian governments (including both PMs) explicitly said they wouldn't support the deal. They don't have an alternative. A plan. Anything. They just won't support it.

Joining them is, you guessed it, THE FUCKING DUP. No matter what happens, they're refusing to go back to Stormont. Just to spite their rivals.

Some more important context, the Conservatives are on the verge of self destructing since vast swathes of the party believe Johnson is a martyr and Sunak is not the True King, so getting the Conservatives to vote together is a massive challenge. If this vote passes, it'll give the Tories a lifeline to the next election, possibly their one positive achievement since 2016 outside of 'not actively backing Putin'. If it fails, the Conservatives are history. Making matters worse in the best way, Keir Starmer pledges Labour's plurality in support of Windsor, saying, to paraphrase, 'if you fucks can't get it together we'll do it for you.' Iconic. By doing so, Labour guarantee the vote passes unless the entire Conservative party rips itself in twain, but potentially force the PM to rely on the OPPOSITION over his OWN PARTY to pass groundbreaking legislation, which is almost worse for Sunak than the bill failing.

The vote took place today and the Conservatives, despite a massive rebellion, barely managed to vote in favour on their own majority alone. Barely. We're talking single digits. Two dozen Tory MPs rebelled, and 3 dozen more abstained. With no alternative. They would rather have chaos in Northern Ireland than be forced to work with the EU when the EU is bending over backwards to make this happen.

Today is a positive for the UK's future, but it reaffirms that the Conservatives need to go now more than ever.

#uk politics #northern ireland #windsor framework #long post #stormont #sorry for the long post i just needed to vent #i hope its accurate if its not ill make edits

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sun-in-retrograde · 9 months ago

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Uranus Conjunct Jupiter - Hope Just Spat Out a Tooth

The Jupiter-Uranus Conjunction is a lot of things, but one way to think of it is basically the new moon of the way the two planets relate - the end of a cycle that started at the last Jupiter Uranus conjunction and the start of something new. I wanted to give a little time to thinking about what we’re putting down, and what we might be able to do with the new energy.

An Aries Cycle

Uranus entered Aries 27 May and stayed there till mid August before retrograde. The conjunction completed 8 June.

Here’s the astro-seek data:

For the first half of the cycle, the energy of the relationship was pretty intense - Jupiter aspected Uranus, then went retrograde and aspected in again, then moved on. It was a slow build up, reaching a pinnacle in 2016/7 before winding down.

Think of this in terms of a lunar cycle. While Jupiter is waxing, building upon the Uranus energy it picked up in its conjunction, Uranus was in Aries. The process was laborious, intense.

Uranus in Aries came with promises - it started with the Arab Spring. Uranus in Aries was a freedom fighter establishing itself. It had rebel without a cause vibes. It came in with riots in the UK over the London Metropolitan Police shooting a black man, the Occupy Movement, the student fees protests and anti-austerity. It came in, fundamentally, with the first Conservative government since 1997.

The last one is important. 1997 was the last election in the UK where power changed hands. Power didn’t change hands in 1983, but the structure of the system changed fundamentally. Uranus and Jupiter can oversee revolutions.

What house is your Aries in? Where was the energy of Uranus active in your life while it was there? Was there anything that took time to develop? Any lessons that had to be learned again and again?

It feels to me almost like Uranus in Aries built up power and worked and grew, then the waning end of the cycle was a release of pressure. For example, in 2010 Britain elected a Conservative government under a Jupiter-Uranus conjunction. The Conservatives got in under a plan to unify the right and temper it’s weirdest and worst aspects. Or at least make it palatable. In 2014, under the square, a right of conservative party group called UKIP became a major party. In 2016 as the opposition completed itself, Britain voted to leave the EU.

In 2018, Uranus entered Taurus - traditional, slow moving and comfortable Taurus is a weird place for Uranus. What happens when Conservatives encounter the nervous energy of Uranus with its connections to queerness and difference? They react with fear. Since the Uranus-Jupiter cycle reached its waning phase, mainstream conservative movements in Britain have been ideologically captured by increasingly deranged conspiracy theorists. This process has felt relatively easy, and fast.

Another example: in 2010 the Lib Dems confirmed they wanted to bring in gay marriage and they had the power to push for it. In 2014, the square gave us gay marriage, but also Time Magazine’s “Transgender tipping point” - the key issues and demands of queer activism started to change. In 2017, at the opposition point of this cycle, the government announced that it would hold a consultation on gender recognition act reform. Then in 2018 Uranus entered Taurus and Gender Critical reactionary anti-trans rhetoric really stepped up. The tenor of the conversation has changed. In 2017 the Tories wanted to be pro-LGBT to be on “the right side of history”. These days the prime minister jokes about murdered trans children in front of their parents.

Cycles and cycles

Of course, we haven’t lost every cultural battle since Uranus entered Taurus, and the Uranus Jupiter Cycle isn’t the only cycle that’s going on. But it has been a tough old cycle. Maybe it was tough for you personally, or maybe the area Uranus has been active in has been blessed with luck from Jupiter. Maybe for you it feels like on a personal level the hard work of Uranus in Aries paid off in an easeful period of Uranus in Taurus. Maybe you’ve even won your political struggles.

It’s worth considering the public and personal issues you’ve been through in this period, and whether they may be coming towards the possibility for something new.

The future

In the next cycle, while it starts in Taurus it’s not there for long - just the conjunction. Then for 14 years Uranus will be active in Gemini, then Cancer.

Taking the last phase as a pattern, the first part of this stage feels relatively easeful - there are no repetitions. In Gemini I wonder if we may find Uranus active in how we respond to, incorporate, and resist technology. This seems reasonable. We appear to have entered one of those periods where technology is shifting.

What interests me is the 2030s. Uranus enters Cancer and we do the work of coming home, nurturing, integrating something. Looking at the cycle we’re about to start - it starts with Uranus in a sign where it’s deeply reactive, and uncomfortable (arguably, Uranus has its fall in Taurus). But, I hope, it’s heading to a kind of integration and better wholeness. There’s the potential in this cycle to learn cool shit and, ultimately, to learn to live with it. To maybe even heal a bit, if we’re lucky.

But, more importantly, it’s a new revolution. Revolutions go around. We didn’t win every fight in the last Jupiter-Uranus cycle, but we won some, and we can win some this time, too.

#astrology #uranus #jupiter

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dangkimnganha1990 · 8 days ago

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April 23, 2012 - Dutch coalition teeters over cuts as EU pact struggles

https://www.dnb.nl/media/yyonohk0/working_paper_no-824.pdf

https://www.reuters.com/article/world/dutch-coalition-teeters-over-cuts-as-eu-pact-struggles-idUSBRE83M07I/

https://www.business-standard.com/article/finance/european-fears-grip-investors-worldwide-112042400055_1.html

Jan 20 2013

Fears of a Europe-wide recession undermining political will to tackle the region's debt crisis gripped financial markets on Monday, sending shares and the single currency lower and driving demand for safe-haven assets. US stocks opened lower on Wall Street.

The economic outlook for Europe was hurt by poor flash Purchasing Manager's Indexes (PMIs) for April, which are a guide to future activity. The reports for the euro zone, Germany and France pointed to a much faster rate of economic contraction across the debt-laden region than had been expected. The gloomier view came as the Dutch government, a close ally to Germany in calling for tougher austerity measures to fight the crisis, resigned because of a crisis over budget cuts.

Investors were also absorbing the implications of the victory in the first round of France's presidential poll of the Socialist Francois Hollande, who has promised to renegotiate a European budget pact.

"It's beginning to look like the perfect storm," said Stewart Richardson, chief investment officer at RMG. "If there is a Dutch election coming up soon it just adds to the whole cocktail of worries for the market."

Voters in Greece also go to the polls on May 6, where the only two major parties that back the EU/IMF bailout plan are just ahead according to the latest polling.

The single currency dropped 0.35 per cent to $1.3150, down from a two-week high on Friday, and was expected to stay under pressure before key debt auctions due later this week by Italy and the Netherlands.

The French and Dutch developments overshadowed the weekend agreement by the world's major economies to provide an additional $430 billion in new crisis-fighting funds to protect the global economy from Europe's problems.

Europe's top shares were bearing the brunt of investors' fears after a lower start on data from China showing factory output in its economy was still contracting. The data also suggested the downtrend may be over.

The FTSE Eurofirst index of top European shares fell 1.9 per cent to 1026.27 points, having just posted its best week in a month. Banks , which are exposed to Europe's debt problems, were down 3 per cent, led by Amsterdam-listed ING Groep, which fell 7.5 per cent.

April's PMI for the euro zone's dominant service sector fell to 47.9 from 49.2 in March - a five-month low and below forecasts in a Reuters poll of more than 40 economists which projected a rise to 49.3.

But the impact of the data was increased by a separate PMI for Germany which showed Europe's largest economy had seen its export-oriented manufacturing sector shrink at the fastest pace in nearly three years in April.

"They're all telling us that the (euro zone) economy has lost a lot of momentum. It's not even true now to say this is a problem of the periphery, because the core economies would appear to be suffering too," said Peter Dixon, global equities economist at Commerzbank.

The news sent safe-haven German government bond yields to record lows of 1.584 per cent, while yields on the ultimate safety play, 10-year U.S. Treasury notes, fell 4 basis points to a seven-week low of 1.921 per cent.

Yields on most other peripheral euro zone debt worsened with Spain's 10-year bond yield jumping back above six per cent.

The cost of insuring Dutch debt against default jumped to its highest since January and the premium investors demand to hold the bonds, rather than equivalent German benchmarks, surged to the highest level in three years.

The mixed signals on China's likely demand for metals in the latest HSBC PMI was not enough to offset the worries over Europe in the commodities market, where three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange fell 1.8 per cent $8,043.50 a tonne.

Gold prices eased towards $1,630 an ounce, extending the two per cent losses it has posted so far this month.

Gold watchers are expected to turn their attention shortly to the Federal Reserve's two-day policy meeting from Tuesday, at which the potential for more monetary easing is set to be addressed.

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head-post · 16 days ago

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Global markets mixed at Christmas

Commodity prices were mixed over the Christmas week, looking for direction amid political developments, while markets were dominated by the perception of high risk ahead of President-elect Donald Trump taking office and his promised increase in tariffs on China.

US 10-year bond futures hit their highest since May, rising to 4.26 per cent, after the Federal Reserve signalled that next year’s rate-cutting cycle may be slower than expected. The US dollar index held near a near two-year high, rising to 108.3 last week and ending trading at 108.0.

Analysts believe geopolitical tensions and central bank gold purchases will continue after Trump returns to the presidency in January, and political uncertainty will persist.

Gold fell 0.3 per cent an ounce amid rising bonds and markets’ focus on the impact of Trump’s policies and the Fed’s future roadmap. Silver and palladium were down 0.6 per cent and 0.9 per cent respectively, while platinum rose 0.6 per cent an ounce last week.

Meanwhile, copper rose 0.8% as the Chinese government announced it would reduce import tariffs on processed copper and aluminium from January 1.

China’s finance minister said the decision was to encourage imports of high-grade products and expand domestic demand as the China-Maldives Free Trade Agreement (FTA) comes into effect on the first day of the new year.

On Monday, El Salvador’s legislature lifted a seven-year ban on metal mining. President Nayib Bukele backed lifting the ban to boost economic growth, while environmental groups criticised.

Chile’s environmental body SMA filed four charges against Anglo American-controlled Los Bronces copper mine for failing to comply with environmental permits, resulting in a $17.2 million fine.

Chile’s Cadelco has applied to extend the life of its Gabriela Mistral copper mine by more than 25 years with an investment of $800 million. The mine is scheduled to extend its life from 2028 to 2055 and the use of local groundwater will be phased out by 2035.

Aluminium rose 0.8% and zinc rose 1.3%, while lead fell 1.4% and nickel fell 1% over the past week.

Energy sector prices

As for the energy sector, Brent crude ended the week up 1%, rising to a weekly record high thanks to a larger-than-expected decline in US crude inventories. Greece and Israel concluded an agreement to promote regional energy stability and innovative energy projects in the Eastern Mediterranean and the EU.

India’s Bharat Petroleum announced plans to invest $11 billion in a new refinery and petrochemical project in Andhra Pradesh state in the south of the country to meet growing fuel demand.

Russia’s Gazprom chief Alexei Miller said natural gas production will increase by 61 billion cubic metres to 416 billion cubic metres this year. The Venture Bayou tanker of US-based Venture Global LNG has set sail from its export facility in Louisiana to deliver its first cargo to Germany.

Grain prices

China has also launched a 10-year action plan to boost grain consumption and develop the sector through higher standards, research and international co-operation to enhance food security.

According to the plan, by 2035, China’s grain awareness and consumption should match the country’s economic and social development by 2035.

Soybeans rose 1.1 per cent after Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Flavio Dino suspended a law that would have eliminated tax breaks for companies following an agreement not to buy soybeans from deforested areas of the Amazon rainforest. The law would have taken effect on January 1 in the western state of Mato Grosso, the country’s largest soybean producer.

On the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the price of a bushel of corn rose 1.7 per cent and rice fell 2.2 per cent.

The price of sugar fell 0.8 per cent due to lower sugarcane yields in India following last year’s drought and this year’s heavy rains, which could bring the country’s sugar production below consumption for the first time in eight years.

The price of a tonne of cocoa ended the week down 15.31% from record highs on concerns about the possible impact of the Harmattan wind on Ivory Coast’s cocoa crop, which could dry out the soil and damage the fruit.

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bopinion · 1 month ago

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2024 / 48

Aperçu of the week

“Life is lived forwards and understood backwards.”

(Søren Kierkegaard, Danish philosopher, writer and theologian)

Bad News of the Week

Marine Le Pen from the right-wing populist French Rassemblement National and with a good chance of beating Emanuel Macron in the upcoming presidential election is on trial. In addition to a custodial sentence and fine, the public prosecutor's office is demanding that Le Pen is banned from standing in elections for five years for alleged embezzlement of EU funds. The proceedings were concluded last week and the verdict and sentence are expected to be announced at the beginning of 2025.

Jair Bolsonaro, former right-wing populist Brazilian president, is likely to stand trial soon. The federal police have presented “overwhelming evidence” to the public prosecutor's office that he was personally involved in planning a coup attempt when he lost the elections to Lula da Silva. Bolsonaro is already banned from running for political office until 2030. And after Vladimir Putin, the International Criminal Court has now also issued an arrest warrant against Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes. Excellent. The rule of law at work. Everywhere in the world.

Everywhere in the world? No. Because in countries like Myanmar, Belarus or Equatorial Guinea there is no functioning rule of law. And neither in the USA. That may sound provocative. But the way in which the US legal system buckled before the legally convicted fraudster and rapist Donald J. Trump after his candidacy is not befitting of a constitutional state from A to Z. And after his election, all the things that were to be feared are now happening. And they don't look good.

The proceedings against Trump for attempted election fraud and a document affair are about to come to an end. Because he is about to return to the White House, Special Prosecutor Jack Smith has requested that they be dropped. The federal judge responsible, Tanya Chutkan, granted the request. The reason given was that it is "customary" for the Department of Justice not to take action against sitting presidents. Really? Out of tradition, so to speak? And only for the president? Sorry, but that is unworthy of a constitutional state.

I find the principle of pardons just as unworthy, illogical and incomprehensible. Governors can even save murderers from the electric chair (yes, that is also unworthy per se). And Trump has already taken advantage of this privilege. He first pardoned the father of his son-in-law Jared Kushner - Charles Kushner was convicted of illegal campaign financing, tax fraud and witness intimidation, among other things - and has now even appointed him as ambassador to France.

And this is not even a Republican “problem”. Joe Biden has just pardoned his son Hunter - who was theoretically facing up to 42 years in prison after being convicted of tax fraud and illegal gun possession. Just as Bill Clinton did to his half-brother accused of drug trafficking on his last day as president. For me that's qualifying for a Banana Republic. But it shouldn't for a democracy.

Good News of the Week

The traffic light coalition of Social Democrats, Greens and Liberals governing at the German federal level has collapsed, with early elections scheduled for the end of February 2025. All parties have more or less rushed into the election campaign, with special party conferences, candidate selection and programmatic positions taking place. Currently, more or less everyone is competing against everyone else. And of course there is a blame game for the traffic light break.

Many political observers expected the Liberals to be the party most likely to provoke a break in the coalition. Party leader Christian Lindner (called “Bambi” because of his quite innocent looks) had already caused a coalition to collapse - albeit during negotiations to form one - with the words “Better not to govern at all than to govern wrongly”. Now he was obviously of the same opinion again, otherwise one cannot understand his repeated attacks on his coalition partners. As finance minister, he has a decisive lever in his hand: money. And Lindner's fetish has always been the "debt brake", even if, according to economic experts, this system should be overhauled and, in the opinion of society at large, should no longer be sacred, at least in exceptional circumstances.

It is therefore not surprising that the biggest scandal of recent days concerns the Liberals. According to the official interpretation, the Social Democratic Chancellor Olaf Scholz had to dismiss his Finance Minister because the latter was no longer willing to compromise on budgetary issues. Days earlier, however, Lindner had already been exerting increasing pressure for economic policy reforms that no longer had anything to do with liberal politics, but were instead reactionary economic policy: less welfare state, less regulation, less climate protection. Instead, tax subsidies and cost reductions for industry. Unacceptable for the Social Democrats and Greens - of course.

And then a bombshell was dropped: in a strategy paper, the Liberals had planned in detail the deliberate break-up of the traffic light system. Including a date defined as “D-day” on which the “open field battle” was to begin. This paper was leaked. But its existence was not denied. But it was only circulated at party staff level. The leadership, board or ministers were not aware of it. And besides, it was completely normal to play through eventualities in theory. Since then, the General Secretary has resigned and the entire party has plummeted to 3%. As things stand today, the party would not enter parliament again (5% hurdle).

Why do I think this is good news? Because it is rare that those actually responsible are (or could be) held accountable. The last time the Liberals broke the coalition was in 1982 - against the Social Democrats. And then went back into government with the Conservatives under Helmut Kohl. And back then, the Liberals still had values with greats such as Hans-Dietrich Genscher and Otto Graf Lambsdorff. With today's Liberals, and Christian Lindner in particular, you get the feeling that it's not even client interests that count, but only personal ones. And that is not enough. They will probably have to pay a bill for this. And that's good.

I couldn't care less...

...that FIFA awarded the 2034 Men's Soccer World Cup to Saudi Arabia. Because we already knew about their corruption before the decision in favor of Russia and Qatar. But the official justification leaves me a little speechless: because the hosts' “unique, innovative and ambitious vision” would make it clear “that the bid offers significant opportunities for positive impact on human rights”. You really should think about boycotting. But I already went soft last time. Let's see.

It's fine with me...

...that Australia bans social media for minors younger than 16 years. Because, in the government's view, social media endangers the wellbeing of children and young people at the very least. I can live with that. After all, we also want our children to be 16 years old before they drink alcohol. And we also have something against bullying and exclusion and elitism in the schoolyard - so why not online too?

As I write this...

...I have to think about the general mood. According to a recent survey in Bavaria, only 12 percent are confident about the future. In contrast, 83 percent are worried about the situation in the country. And Bavaria is not only doing quite well comparatively speaking. But somehow it feels as if we all are lurching from one crisis to the next, falling from one hole to the next.

Post Scriptum

In the last chapter, we come to a truly catastrophic development - at least for me, who drinks five to ten espresso doppios a day (and also knows that this is too much): the price of coffee is rising to its highest level since 1977. Poor harvests and Donald Trump's customs policy are making coffee more expensive. Arabica beans are being traded on the New York commodity exchange at the highest level in almost 50 years. I will probably have to change my budget plans.

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qnewsau · 6 months ago

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Civil unions begin for same-sex couples in Latvia

New Post has been published on https://qnews.com.au/civil-unions-begin-for-same-sex-couples-in-latvia/

Civil unions begin for same-sex couples in Latvia

With civil unions becoming available for gay and lesbian couples in Latvia on July 1, only five EU member states still do not formally recognise same-sex relationships under the law.

Latvia’s civil unions law was passed by the parliament in November last year but it only came into effect on Monday.

Maksims Ringo and Janis Locs became the first Latvian couple to register their relationship as a civil union, staying up past midnight on June 30 in the capital Riga until the law came into effect.

They exchanged silver rings which they plan to exchange for gold rings if Latvia ever overturns its 2006 constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.

“We are together for five and a half years … so for us, it’s mostly practical,” Ringo told the Reuters news agency on Monday.

Better rights but still not equal

Latvian couples who register their relationships as civil unions will have guaranteed hospital visitation rights and improved tax and social security arrangements.

However they will still not be able to adopt children as a couple or adopt their partner’s children and are still not guaranteed inheritance rights if their partner dies.

“The introduction of partnership in Latvia is an important step towards a more equal, inclusive and empathetic society, in which each person feels valued and can realise his or her potential both in personal and professional life,” Latvia’s Life Partners movement leader Kaspars Zālītis said in a statement.

“The introduction of the Institute of Partnership Law is an important signal that all families in Latvia are protected, valued, and recognised.

“This is extremely important for people who have remained invisible to the state, not only in practical matters of everyday life but also emotionally. This long-awaited moment will positively change the lives of many people,”

Latvia’s parliament elected its first openly gay head of state in May, President Edgars Rinkevics.

The five EU holdouts

With this reform coming into effect, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia are left as the only remaining EU states that do not recognise same-sex relationships – though the European Court of Justice has ruled that all EU states must grant married same-sex couples, where at least one partner is an EU citizen, full residency rights and freedom of movement.

Neighbouring Estonia legalised same-sex marriage in June last year, becoming the first Baltic state to do so.

For the latest LGBTIQA+ Sister Girl and Brother Boy news, entertainment, community stories in Australia, visit qnews.com.au. Check out our latest magazines or find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

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beardedmrbean · 7 months ago

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France's political future was up in the air Thursday with the far-right surging in polls but other forces fighting to the end three days before a high-stakes parliamentary vote.

Depending on the result, President Emmanuel Macron could be left in a tense "cohabitation" with a prime minister from an opposing party, or with a chamber unable to produce a stable majority for at least a year to govern the EU's second economy and top military power.

Surveys suggest voters will hand the National Rally (RN) of Marine Le Pen over 35 percent in the first round on Sunday, with a left alliance trailing on up to 29 and Macron's centrists in the dust at around 20 percent.

When he called the snap poll after a June 9 European election drubbing by the RN, Macron had hoped to present voters with a stark choice about whether to hand France to the far right.

But the lightning three-week campaign "wasn't going to turn around the major trends," Brice Teinturier, deputy director of pollster Ipsos, told Le Monde daily, adding that the "RN bloc is incredibly powerful".

Even France's seasoned pollsters are struggling to translate that base level of support into a final result, as July 7's second-round run-off ballots -- many expected to be three-way fights -- can see voters shift allegiances and new alliances of convenience form.

Higher-than-usual turnout could also transform the vote.

Around two thirds of eligible voters plan to cast their ballots, which would be the highest level since 1997.

By Thursday, polling firm Harris Interactive Toluna was predicting 250 to 305 seats out of 577 for the RN -- putting an absolute majority in its grasp -- while Ifop-Fiducial suggested the party could top out at 260.

Le Pen already was planning for an absoute majority and RN head of government, telling the Telegramme daily that the president's title as commander-in-chief of the armed forces was "an honorific, because it's the prime minister who holds the purse strings."

Therefore, "on Ukraine, the president will not be able to send troops", she added, undermining his warning to Moscow that France would keep all options on the table to thwart Russia's invasion of its neighbour.

Her candidate for prime minister, Jordan Bardella, has already vowed not to send Kyiv long-range missiles and other weapons that could strike Russian territory, in a reversal of Macron's policy.

The RN has also said it will not agree to form a government without an absolute majority -- leaving open the possibility that no political force will be able to keep a prime minister in place.

Last gasp

Hoping to defy the odds, current incumbent Gabriel Attal -- named months ago by Macron as France's youngest-ever PM -- will take on RN frontman Bardella and Socialist Party leader Olivier Faure in a TV debate on Thursday evening.

It marks one of the last opportunities to convince voters as campaigning is officially suspended on Saturday and during voting on Sunday.

Candidates had failed to land any telling blows in a previous broadcast showdown on Tuesday.

Attal on Wednesday hammered his message throughout the lightning three-week campaign at a stop in central France, asking voters to reject an RN that "stigmatises" parts of the population and a left alliance he said indulged sectarianism.

Bardella may attempt to clarify some of his plans for voters' wallets, after struggling to explain how he would undo Macron's unpopular increase to the pension age or shape a policy to exempt under-30s from income tax.

He was forced to say Wednesday that "of course there would be a ceiling" on the income tax exemption after being challenged on whether star France striker Kylian Mbappe's multi-million salary would go untaxed.

#nunyas news

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mariacallous · 9 months ago

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The election earlier this month of the Russia-friendly populist Peter Pellegrini to president of Slovakia over the pro-Western candidate, Ivan Korcok, has gifted Moscow another collaborator in the EU, and thus dealt faltering Ukraine a further blow as it struggles on the battlefield. The new president will solidify the power of his close political ally, Prime Minister Robert Fico, who opposes sending military aid to Ukraine, and hand Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban a more solid pro-Russia ally in EU and NATO decision-making processes.

The campaign’s shrill tone, dominated by anti-Ukrainian and pro-Russian disinformation posing Korcok as a U.S. lackey and “candidate of war,” is not just another case of dirty electioneering in Central Europe. It is also the result of Russia’s intervention in Slovakia’s media space and politics, which experts say ramped up significantly during the campaign’s final weeks. It was another stark warning ahead of European parliamentary elections in June that Russian digital propagandists and their proxies are intent upon—and capable of—swaying elections within the EU.

The contest for the Slovakian presidency might at first glance seem like a marginal spectacle. In the Central European country of just 5.4 million, the presidency has few powers, the most consequential being a veto over new legislation—and even that can be overridden by the parliament with a simple majority. Yet for the past five years this post has been held by the progressive-minded environmental and human rights advocate Zuzana Caputova, who, when elected in 2019, many saw as a bright spot in Central and Eastern Europe, a region where populists have thrived. Perhaps her most important work—and evidence of the enormity of the popular figure’s decision not to run for reelection—unfolded in the last six months. Despite her limited reach, Caputova acted as a check on Fico’s three-party coalition, for example by challenging the government’s overhaul of the criminal code.

Korcok, a retired diplomat who was foreign minister from 2020 to 2022, would have been an able successor, observers said. And he entered the race in pole position after winning the first round of voting in March with 42.5 percent of the votes, compared to Pellegrini’s 37 percent.

But a campaign featuring a barrage of pro-Russian disinformation could have been the lever that turned the result around so dramatically: Pellegrini captured around 53 percent, while Korcok trailed woefully with almost 47 percent. Russia’s footprint was all over the election campaign, said Slovak observers, and, as it did in last year’s parliamentary elections, Russia’s machinations may well have swung the vote to its favored candidate.

“Russia’s impact was immense and influential,” said Eva Mihockova of the Bratislava-based think tank Slovak Foreign Policy Association. “The lies and ridiculous falsehoods on dubious websites and social media blasted Korcok as the candidate of war and a dangerous free-market liberal,” she said. “The influence of Russia is obvious, even though there’s no evidence yet that these media are actually paid by Moscow, although there is big suspicion that they are. They certainly take a line that reflects Russia’s interests.” Mihockova said that much of the disinformation comes indirectly through Slovak proxies rather than directly from Russia, in contrast to last year, when Slovakia expelled a Russian diplomat for meddling in the parliamentary campaign.

“Since the pandemic, the pro-Russia, conspiracy-theorizing, so-called alternative media have been and are instrumental in changing the political landscape here, as well as the language and culture,” said Juliana Sokolova, a Slovak poet and philosopher. “They are listened to by lots of people and accepted as true.”

The pro-Russian internet platforms and social media channels, said Slovak experts such as Dominika Hajdu of the Bratislava think tank Globsec, threw their support demonstratively behind Pellegrini after the first round. The websites—such as Hlavne Spravy, ExtraPlus, InfoVojna, and others—reiterated the Kremlin line pretty much verbatim, she said. Hlavne Spravy’s Telegram account is rife with posts about LGBTQ perversion, Washington’s aggressive foreign policies, NATO’s expansionist aims, the NATO-U.S. bombing of Serbia in 1999, and of course the war in Ukraine itself: the oppression of the Russian minority in Ukraine, NATO hawkishness, and the far right in Ukrainian society and politics. Some of the Slovak websites’ news bulletins simply copied, translated, and pasted articles from NewsFront, Hajdu said, referring to a Crimea-based disinformation and propaganda outlet that works with Russia’s main security agency, the FSB.

According to Gerulata Technologies, a Slovak start-up specializing in hybrid threats, the thicket of pro-Russian media is complex and intransparent. There are far-right, far-left, and populist politicians who spread pro-Russian propaganda out of conviction, it said, as well as disinformation media outlets that are sometimes directly connected to Russian interests and others, like the Slovak branch of NewsFront, that are Russian state-controlled trolls and proxies.

The analyst Michaela Ruzickova said in the two weeks before the vote, the pro-Russian narratives reached a crescendo. Even more so than in July last year, Ruzickova, working for the think tank Warsaw Institute, found that “to achieve its goals, the Kremlin uses not only its own resources (embassies, spies, oligarchs), but also local actors who are willing to cooperate and spread Russian propaganda for various incentives.” Ruzickova argued that “the multiplication of Russian influence in Slovakia is facilitated by domestic sympathizers and disinformation actors who willingly adopt the content of pro-Kremlin channels, as well as the official positions of the Russian military and political establishment. Slovak disinformation actors are thus deliberately helping Russia to legitimize its policies and discredit Ukraine, the West, and democratic and international institutions.”

The most pronounced example of this was the way that, in the aftermath of the first-round vote, Slovakia’s pro-Russia media outlets and proxies energetically perpetuated the disinformation that Korcok was the candidate of war who would reinstate military conscription and send Slovak soldiers to Ukraine to fight for Kyiv. They charged that Korcok was a U.S. and NATO puppet who put the interests of the EU and the Atlantic alliance above those of ordinary Slovaks. In fact, Korcok never said this, nor does the Slovak president have the power to send anyone to war. Fico joined in the cacophony of Russian tropes, calling Korcok a “warmonger.”

There is evidence across Central Europe of Russia investing in disinformation channels much like the Slovak websites and illiberal right-wing parties. On March 27, the German magazine Der Spiegel and the Czech Deník N reported that politicians from Germany, France, Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Hungary received payments from Voice of Europe, a portal owned by a pro-Russian Ukrainian oligarch, to spread Russian propaganda in advance of the European Parliament vote. The Czech government slapped sanctions on the platform for promoting Russian interests and covertly financing candidates for the European Parliament, which caused it to cease operations. Voice of Europe had more than 180,000 followers on Twitter/X, according to the BBC.

Matus Kostolny, chief editor of Dennik N, finds it hard to explain the Slovaks’ favorable opinion of Russia after the Soviet Union’s 40 years of postwar occupation of Slovakia and the invasion of Ukraine—in stark contrast to neighboring Czech Republic and Poland. But he underscored that the Russian propaganda in Slovakia has more voices than just “fake journalists” on the internet. “Slovakia’s politicians, particularly in the government parties, regularly mouth this language of Russia and repeat its topics and propaganda. This is more powerful than anything coming directly from Russia.”

“It’s not that Slovaks want to live in Russia, nor do these [pro-Russian] politicians want the Soviet Union back in Slovakia,” Kostolny told Foreign Policy. “But they use it to attack their liberal opponents who have cracked down on the corruption and put their allies behind bars.” The Slovak president, Kostolny noted, has the authority to appoint justices to the Constitutional Court and to issue pardons—two critical levers for reversing the fight against corruption. Kostolny said he wouldn’t be in the least bit surprised if Pellegrini begins pardoning some of the dozens of convicted figures from the ranks of the government parties.

But Slovakia’s new rulers have shown that they will practice what they preach. After the Fico government took office last year, Fico cut off Slovakian military aid to Ukraine and then claimed earlier this year that Ukraine stood “completely under the influence and control of the USA” and is therefore “not an independent and sovereign country.”

Sokolova said that another critical component to the wins by Fico’s party and Pellegrini was the long arm of Orban. The ethnic Hungarians living in Slovakia compose about 8 percent of the population and vote in both Slovak and Hungarian elections. They vote overwhelmingly for Orban’s Fidesz party and tend to chafe under the rule of Slovak nationalist politicos.

But Orban sees an alliance with Slovakia’s populist government, which includes the ultranationalist Slovak National Party, as a better payoff than fighting rhetorical battles over bygone injustices. “Orban mobilizing voters in southern Slovakia via his media for Pellegrini was absolutely decisive,” said Sokolova, an ethnic Hungarian living in southern Slovakia. “The voter turnout [for Pellegrini] was massive in [ethnic] Hungarian towns.”

Mihockova said the ethnic animosity between Slovaks and Hungarians has mostly evaporated in favor of other enmities. “Slovakia’s nationalists and autocrats found that you can win more voters with the hate figure favorites of the Orban regime—such as Brussels, the U.S., and immigrants—than with traditional ethnic nationalism,” she told Foreign Policy. “The Slovak populists see Orban and Fidesz Hungary as a role model.” And, as for Orban’s about-face, “he needs partners,” Mihockova said.

Now, with Slovakia’s populist president and government in place, he has one more partner in his crusade to flip the European Parliament and abandon Europe’s defense of Ukraine.

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at-the-end-of-days · 11 months ago

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Conspiracy Theory Time:

It is February 28, 2024.

Looking at America, they have cancelled Roe v. Wade, resulting in more pregnancies.

They have a Migrant “crisis.”

Though Europe is having a similar issue:

Warsaw, Feb 7 (Reuters) - Irregular immigration to the EU from Western Africa rose more than ten times on the year in January, according to the bloc's Frontex border agency, which expects overall arrivals to grow in 2024 and says halting the movement of people completely is impossible.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/eu-border-agency-says-stopping-migration-is-impossible-2024-02-07/#:~:text=Warsaw%2C%20Feb%207%20(Reuters),of%20people%20completely%20is%20impossible

Their military is restructuring. Aka, cutting about 24,000 positions.

Their military is also offering a chance for Migrants to fast track their U.S. citizenship by joining the military.

If you served honorably in the U.S. armed forces for at least one year at any time, you may be eligible to apply for naturalization. While some general naturalization requirements apply under INA 328, other requirements may not apply or are reduced.

https://www.uscis.gov/military/naturalization-through-military-service#:~:text=If%20you%20served%20honorably%20in,not%20apply%20or%20are%20reduced.

That was in 2023. 2024?

It’s even faster.

And Senate leader, Mitch McConnell is stepping down in November.

And we all know how much politicians love their money and to stay in power.

And the United States can never pay back its national debt.

My theory?

The United States has been planning world war 3 for a long time. They planned to overthrow Roe v. Wade to begin preparing for a massive population loss. They’re fighting all they can to ensure as many women as possible get and stay pregnant, both as a means of controlling women, and to pump the population before a dip. They can’t pay back their national debt, and they would need a valid reason to cancel the debt, or destroy their own economy.

They’ve been purposefully firing up the migrant issue for a while now, both in policy and in opinion of the population, so that the Migrants will feel they have no other choice than to join the military for citizenship.

So, they vacated positions, to save the “true born Americans” and then send in as many migrants as possible to get a war started, to keep the “true borns” in reserve. Yes, countless will die, but now more of the “other” can die in their government’s eyes.

^this doesn’t reflect my morals, I do not approve of this, or war, it’s simply what I think their government is considering.

I don’t like Trump as a person, politician, or businessman from what I’ve read and seen. But would he even have a chance to be President of the United States if NATO goes into Ukraine before the election? Wouldn’t their current President simply remain president? But the other politicians, their party leaders at least, know more than their people do. I don’t think their Senate leader wants to lead during a war, so, stepping down come the election.

But that’s my theory, that everything’s been planned by the United States for a global conflict.

#conspiracy theory #at the end of days #American politics #United States military #United states

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news-now · 3 years ago

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Spies, Business deals and Criminals. How Orbán favors Russian interests instead of Western Ones

In the past 12 years, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government has gotten into a situation many times, when they had to decide between the interests of Western allies, or Russia. News Now has revealed many cases, where, in the end, the government favored Vladimir Putin and his circles. It occurred, for example, that they drove a Hungarian company out of business, just to be able to make space for a Russian firm.

From the beginning of the Russian invasion on Ukraine, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and members of his government suddenly started stressing their devotion for their Western alliance and NATO. In the past 12 years, however, several Hungarian government decisions benefited Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

These were especially eye-catching when the government favored Putin and his circles even in situations when Russian aspirations obviously collided with the interest of Hungary’s NATO and EU-allies, or even Hungarian economic players, or the Hungarian state itself.

Since these conflicts mostly took place behind the curtains, they only became public afterwards, thanks to the investigative work of, amongst many, News Now. In this article we summarised how the Orbán government decided in many of these disputed matters prioritizing Russia’s interests.

Fidesz oligarchs visiting Putin’s intelligence service

Up until 2010, one could have the perception – based on his rhetoric in public – that Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party represented a reliably pro-Western position in foreign policy, security, and energy issues. For instance, April Foley, the former U.S. Ambassador to Budapest put it this way in a diplomatic telegram, that was later published by WikiLeaks:

„Orbán may be no angel, but he is on the side of the angels on these issues.”

However, choosing sides was not that obvious anymore for Viktor Orbán when he was preparing to win the parliamentary elections in 2010. It was a clear sign when the Fidesz charman – who had previously been presumed as anti-Russian – met Putin in person in Russia at the end of 2009. What the public had no knowledge about, however, was that Fidesz oligarch Lajos Simicska and his close associate, businessman Zsolt Nyerges, later also flew to Moscow.

Simicska and his people were still controlling the economic hinterland of Fidesz as close allies of Orbán at that time, and they went to Russia to build relationships useful in the future governing. Their way led to the former KGB headquarters at Lubyanka Square, where they had a negotiation with a representative of the FSB (Federal Security Service), the successor to the KGB. (Previously, Vladimir Putin was director of the FSB, and he also served as a KGB security officer in his youth.)

Sources familiar with this meeting told News Now that at this “introductory visit” the Russians expressed that if the Hungarian party needs assistance in business matters, they can be “counted on”. Information about the meeting only became public in 2018, when News Now published a long article revealing the nature of Viktor Orbán and Vladimir Putin’s relationship (in the article, we also showed what disputed issued needed to be settled first to get this friendship started).

Russian nuclear deal instead of Western technologies

Orbán’s first truly spectacular move signalling both in Hungary and abroad that he would be committed to Russia in the long run was when he decided on the Paks nuclear power plant extension.

During the early 2010’s, U.S., French and South Korean companies were also interested in carrying out this project. By the end of 2013, however, Hungarian government officials negotiating on the matter received an order saying that there was no need for further discussions.

This was because, in a confidential meeting in August 2013, Viktor Orbán made an agreement with the head of Russian state nuclear company Rosatom awarding the contract of the new nuclear plant in Paks to the Russians without an open bidding. Details were settled by the Russian and Hungarian parties in secrecy in the upcoming months. The public was only notified when, in January 2014, Orbán and Putin declared that they signed a contract on the matter.

Although the European Union’s approval on the project had caused some delays, it did not get any faster afterwards either. The main reason for this was that the Russians struggled to make progress with planning the facility in accordance with the applying Hungarian standards. A visible sign of this was that the construction permit request was not ready in time. In this document, based on Russian plans, it must be justified that the power plant can be built and operated safely. At first, the Hungarian government expected that this paper could be filed with the Hungarian Atomic Energy Authority, which is responsible for the approval, in 2018. Eventually, it only happened much later in 2020.

Although the Russians were stranded in the planning, they still urged to start executing the project, and came up with many ideas they thought could be used to catch up with the delay. One suggestion was that some specific groundwork could be started before the construction permit is approved. This had a risk that if the foundations are laid before the project’s documentations are accepted, it is not certain that they would fit to the future power plant in all aspects.

To be able to go through with these modifications favored by the Russians, the Hungarian government eventually agreed to change a crucial regulation, which caused conflicts even inside the administration, and needed additional approval from the European Union.

The government however did not let the power plant get the construction permit before the Russians corrected their faulty documentation.

Hungarian company booted out to make space for Russians

The government prioritized Russian interests above Hungarians, when Ganz group, a Hungarian mechanical engineering firm, got close to a lucrative foreign contract. As a member of a consortium, Ganz won an Egyptian tender for the purchase of 1,300 railway carriages worth many hundreds of billions of forints. To be able to carry out the project, Ganz needed a loan from the state. State-owned Eximbank first took over the payment of this, but later cancelled and threw their support behind Transmashholding instead, which was the Russian competitor of Ganz.

As Ganz’s bid was made impossible, in September of 2018, the Egyptians entered into a contract with Transmashholding Hungary Ltd., the Hungarian subsidiary of the Russian firm. Later, pro-government figures started showing up around this company. One of the firsts steps of this progress was when Kristóf Szalay-Bobrovniczky, former Hungarian Ambassador to London and once a business partner of Árpád Habony, bought ownership in the tender-winner company.

The Hungarian state favored Transmashholding also when in spring 2021 they decided to withdraw and relaunch the 200 billion forints worth public procurement of suburban rail carriages. The government’s official explanation was that the bids of the two contenders, the Swiss Stadler and the French Alstom companies, were too pricey. By rebooting the procurement, Transmashholding also got a chance to enter the competition for the huge contract. Previously, the Russian company did not meet the requirements of the original procurement conditions.

In our country even Russian spies run free

Besides the Russian expansion of the Paks nuclear plant, the Orbán government has most frequently been criticised for turning a blind eye to Russian intelligence operations. In the 2010’s, majority of EU and NATO member states started seeing Russia as the greatest threat to their national security. They kept revealing Russian spies committing assassinations, murders, and explosions. Orbán’s government, however, approached the problem in a completely different way.

For instance, News Now uncovered that although Russian spies – about ten of them between 2010 and 2016 – have been exposed in Hungary too, these spy affairs were always dealt with secrecy. While neighbouring countries made cases public many times when Russian intelligence operatives were caught, and Russian diplomats were expelled as sanctions, Hungary simply asked the exposed officials to return home.

This so called “silent expulsion” happened in the case of that GRU agent too who previously had been in contact with the Hungarian neo-Nazi group called Hungarian National Front (MNA). This organisation became widely known in 2016. Their leader, István Győrkös had gotten into a firefight with police officers arriving to search his home for weapons, and one officer died. Subsequently, Index.hu discovered that GRU intelligence officers working under diplomatic cover in the Russian embassy in Budapest provided military training to the Hungarian neo-Nazis, disguised as airsoft practice (military games played with tools resembling real weapons).

Since 2010, there was only a single case when Hungary officially banned a Russian diplomat. This happened in spring 2018, after the GRU tried to murder former Russian spy Sergey Skripal – who defected and, by that time, also lived in Great Britain – and his daughter with a nerve agent. As a response to the assassination attempt, NATO and EU member states, following up a British initiative, expelled Russian diplomats with GRU ties, and Hungary also joined the action.

But even on this rare occasion, News Now found out that Budapest and Moscow secretly played on the same side, and commanded the mutual expulsion of their diplomats in a way that they could avoid harming Russian-Hungarian relations. For example, the Russian diplomat who was banned from Hungary had finished his mission anyway beforehand, and was already preparing to return home.

But the graciousness of the Hungarian counterintelligence towards Russian intelligence services was perhaps best shown in the handling of the Hungarian residency bond (golden visa) program. News Now, together with 444.hu and Russia’s Novaya Gazeta, found that people in Putin’s circles had also purchased Hungarian residency permits (combined with Schengen visas), and some of them were quite problematic with respect to Hungarian national security. Despite compulsory national security screenings, residency bonds were purchased by Russian foreign intelligence (SVR) head Sergey Naryshkin’s close family members, like, for example, his son.

Arms dealers helped to freedom by the Orbán government

While the Orbán government did a growing number of favors to Russia in mostly economic matters and also did not step up firmly against Russian espionage, the cooperation with NATO partners could have never been doubted in the field of law enforcement. The turning point was the Lyubishin affair.

Vladimir Lyubishin and his son of the same name had long been living in Hungary, from where the Russians were selling arms – for example, discarded weapons of the Hungarian Defence Forces. When representatives of a Mexican drug cartel showed up as potential customers, they did not turn them down either. Among many other things, they wanted to buy anti-aircraft missiles that they would shoot at the helicopters of the U.S. coast guards, and besides cash, they would have paid the for them in cocaine. But not long after the deal had been made, the Lyubishins were raided by Counter Terrorism Centre (TEK) special forces.

News Now revealed the Lyubishin’s story in the autumn of 2018. In a secret international investigation under the codename ‘Perseus’ it was the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) that captured the two Russians in a sting operation. Subsequently, the Lyubishins were to stand trial in New York City. Throughout the whole investigation, the U.S. cooperated with Hungarian authorities, this is why they were stunned when the Orbán government suddenly denied a U.S. extradition request for Lyubishin and his son, and sent the two men to Russia instead.

Later we also found out that it was the Russian FSB that came to the help of the Lyubishins. Russia submitted their extradition request based on a fake, backdated FSB investigation against the two arms dealers that they have actually staged afterwards the arrest in Hungary. Although the Russian documents were full of errors, and even the Hungarian prosecutor was against accepting the Russian extradition request, Minister of Justice László Trócsányi decided to send the weapons smugglers home regardless. First it was Lyubishin Jr. who was set free; and a few months later his father was also released. The case put a strain on the Hungarian-U.S. relationship.

Bank suspected of espionage relocates to Budapest

Not long after the Lyubishin affair, the Orbán government found itself between colliding U.S. and Russian interests once more, and decided in favor of Moscow again.

Vladimir Putin brought one of the former Soviet Bloc’s institutions, the International Investment Bank (IIB) – also dubbed as the ‘Comecon bank’ – back to life in 2012. This step fit well into the part of the Russian foreign policy agenda that wanted to expand its international financial influence. Russia is the biggest stakeholder of IIB and the bank’s chairman is also Russian, which reveals that the whole bank is actually Russian-dominated to its core. Moreover, Russia’s second biggest financial institution, VTB Bank – whose leader has close ties to Putin – has been granted a supervisory position within IIB.

In their financial expansion, Russians found an eager partner in the Orbán government. Hungary joined the IIB in 2015, and soon became its second biggest stakeholder step by step. In the end of 2018, it also turned out that the bank was relocating its headquarters from Moscow to Budapest, and while doing it, they received many privileges from the Hungarian government. Although both the bank and the Hungarian government has been stressing that this is an international institution, in his joint press conference with Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orbán said he asked the Russian president so the bank could come to Budapest.

The bank quickly started its relocation in 2019, but the United States saw the institution as a threat from the very beginning. They were concerned that the bank – abusing the diplomatic immunities that IIB is entitled to have – would send more Russian spies to Hungary. IIB denied this suspicion from the start, while the media emphasized IIB chairman Nikolay Kosov’s family ties to the KGB. His father was a member of the KG task force sent to Hungary to crush the revolution of 1956, and later on he even became the KGB’s local head in Budapest.

IIB – labeled as “Russian spy bank” by the Hungarian opposition – became a symbolic example of the Orbán government’s pro-Kremlin agenda. It was well shown by the fact that, right after the Russians launched the invasion on Ukraine, the Hungarian opposition instantly requested the expulsion of IIB from Hungary. Later, on March 1, they held an anti-war protest in front of the bank’s headquarters.

#Russian #Russian spy bank

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