Putin testing his lapdog Trump if he will bite back to his owner.

If you are a greedy person, the bigger Russia has a lot more to offer than protecting smaller Ukraine’s freedom.

President Muskrate is an accelerationist; who believes that societal collapse should come sooner rather than later. Some speculate that his plan is to capitalise on burgeoning AI along with the billionaire class to control people once the dust settles.

Well, that’s why Western right wingers look to Japan. But the difference is that, Western right wingers are looking to regress back into the olden days when women were baby-churners, whereas I don’t hear from Japan wanting the same (there are some but they are not significant enough to sway public opinion).

I wasn’t convinced at first that NATO is dead on Trump’s first term. But here we are and it is a long time coming.

Some analysts think that the unipolar world is over, and that we’re heading into a multipolar world again but dominated by regional blocs. The EU is definitely there, and sometime later the African Union will become more cohesive and globally influential. But I don’t see Latin America having as strong regional grouping as the EU. In Asia, we can forget it because Asians tend to be insular. There is ASEAN but they do not have the same solidarity as the EU.

Trump is kinda right. Charles De Gaulle wanted a united Europe to prevent Anglo-American influence. Aside from his Anglophobia, he vetoed UK joining then EEC because he thought UK is a Trojan horse for American influence into Europe. He also thought that the British are reluctant Europeans anyhow, so why let them in?

Fast forward 60 years later, and De Gaulle was found right. US companies tried to lobby the EU through UK. The Brits voted for Brexit, and the US finally became an unreliable ally.

For so much of the French being chauvinistic in a cringey way, they are right not to commit to Anglo influence or Atlanticism, presciently. The French still likes to assert their own global influence but in multilateral way with other countries. Macron and De Gaulle are correct for looking for strategic autonomy.

Edit: I also want to add, that the Brussels effect forces other countries to adopt higher standards and regulations if they want to trade with the EU. Obviously, many right wing Americans such as Trump don’t like this.

The world need to be reminded of this. I am quite sure that Netanyahu deliberately ignored the warnings to start a war and use it to distract the public attention away from his own corruption.

There are also a couple of subreddits that are still good. But from what I can see, Reddit is probably only good now for visiting the subreddit of your country or town. I also still look at Reddit for occasional news, as long as I avoid mainstream news subreddits that go on the front-page.

Judges could have biases of their own whether they realise it or not.

As far as I know, Renault sales is ramping up.

President Eon isn’t exactly working in the shadows lol.

I thought his net worth went down but it looks like it plateaud. However, according to this article, Bill’s net worth could be much higher but donates a lot of his assets to charities and his foundations. https://moneyweek.com/investments/605912/bill-gates-net-worth

He still has given away a lot of his wealth to charities, to be fair. He was the richest man after all until Elon came. But Gates is still a billionaire (only because of his underhanded business practices) in spite of donations so he’s still evil but to a lesser extent.

Gates is a “lesser evil” billionaire but he advocated not to revoke the patents on Covid-19 vaccines during the height of the pandemic. I understand the need for innovation, but screw him for still being greedy in the face of immediate crisis. He is two-faced nonetheless.

Yeah, I believe this is what goes on in the minds of many people. They are single issue voters.

I wish the lunatics voters that support this would realize how expensive each of these flights are, at tax payers expense!

I see that the US finally got a taste of the Rwanda plan.

Maybe the closest sane conservative politicians in America are in Alaska. They are Republican for a long time but they have ranked choice voting, and universal basic income coming from oil revenue. I can’t remember the details but it was before the pandemic that both Republicans and Democrats agreed on a progressive policy, thanks to ranked choice voting that force politicians to compromise.

There is a small conservative Texan town that embraced renewable energy, which contradicts the stereotype that they are not progressive.

There are exceptions of course but if you sit down with both conservatives and liberals, both would actually find agreement on many things. It’s mainly that politicians intentionally divide people.

John Stuart Mill has this to say:

“I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it. Suppose any party, in addition to whatever share it may possess of the ability of the community, has nearly the whole of its stupidity, that party must, by the law of its constitution, be the stupidest party… It may be said that if stupidity has a tendency to Conservatism, sciolism, or half-knowledge, has a tendency to Liberalism.

I have grown appreciation to respect some conservative ideas. As I grow older, I see why some look for stability. There is plenty of good debate when it comes fiscal responsibility and gradual reformism, but this doesn’t mean I would reject lgbt rights or support gutting welfare. But yes, generally stupid people seem to gravitate in the direction of conservatism or right.

PS. As a left leaning person, I also agree with Mill’s point about liberals but that is a different topic for another time.

Edit: autoco-wreck

I will play devil’s advocate. Media outlets are scared of being sued for defamation or scrutinised for what may turn out to be misleading news. That’s why there are always referring to “sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity” or adopt a mild language to refer to something. But if I am a news publisher, I would describe Musk’s gesture as “appears to be Nazi salute” or to that effect. It is still calling it out as it is, but I would still have plausible deniability.

Not specifically about Norway, but richer countries are already providing funds to poorer countries to combat climate change, but it goes to vanity projects and other corruption.

The climate fund is unfortunately a money laundering scheme. Nicaragua is right to be apprehensive of the 2015 Paris climate change accords, believing it doesn’t go far enough. There is no actual legal mechanism to hold countries accountable for missing climate targets. Now that I think about it, Trump pulling out of the 2015 Paris climate deal during his first term is not necessarily a loss, since everyone is doing nothing since the accords were signed. In spite of the small climate wins, every current year is always the hottest year until the subsequent year records the hottest global temperature, always beating the previous year’s record.