The Weinstein story is more or less over, but here's an explanation as to the problem with his penis:
https://pagesix.com/2020/06/13/harvey-weinsteins-deformed-penis-result-of-acute-bacterial-infection/
https://airmail.news/issues/2020-6-13/the-making-of-a-predator

>The disgraced movie mogul’s deformed genitalia is the result of a life-threatening bacterial infection known as Fournier’s gangrene, according to reports in Graydon Carter’s Digital News Weekly Airmail. The infection can strike middle-aged men and diabetics — Weinstein, 68, is both — when bacteria enters through a cut or scratch in the genitals and spreads through the bloodstream. Some patients require skin grafts, but more extreme cases, such as Weinstein’s, require an operation to remove the testicles.
>The deformity was first revealed in court when actress Jessica Mann, one of Weinstein’s accusers, said she felt “compassion” for Weinstein after she saw his deformed genitalia, which appeared to have scarring “as if from burns in his nether region,” according to writer Phoebe Eaton, whose three-part series on Weinstein is featured in the current issue of Airmail. Mann said that her first impression was that Weinstein might be “intersex” when she saw the deformity. Jurors at Weinstein’s New York rape trial earlier this year were shown nude pictures of the disgraced movie mogul, including a full-frontal shot showing his deformed penis.

So nope, mutilated by mohel myth busted.

>>43332
I’m glad we finally know. I think some Ernst may have theorized it was the result of Fournier gangrene but honestly I can’t remember for sure.

>>43335
The mutilated by mohel myth didn't even stand up to basic scrutiny seeing that he had 5 children from his previous marriages prior to this little pecker problem. As far as I know, those kids are biologically his unless someone could tell me different.

Something about the Autonomous Zone in Seattle, which I think is made into something larger than it really is, but has a nice symbolic character nonetheless: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/06/chaz-seattle-autonomous-zone.html

>>43337
Map for good measure.

>>43337
>>43338
So, I gather that they live on donations, don't produce anything themselves and, despite being radically anti-police, they still have armed people who are there for "protection"? That's kinda pathetic.

>>43340
I don't think you grasped what it's supposed to be, it's not supposed to simulate an actual autarc new system or anything, it's just a public park and 6 blocks that aren't being officially policed as of now.

>>43340
>>43340

>implying states and a modern system of production were born in two weeks
>implying an az is the same as a state
>implying a few blocks in Seattle can provide enough farmland When will it join WTO, already huh? :DDD
>probably misunderstanding that the demands do not match what might could also be a liberarians wet dream
>implying protection is only possible in the form a police as executive force of the state

Nice crackerbarrel posting

Anyway, the other German said it already, it's a symbol. Az usually become something like community centers if order is not restored fully by force

>>43341
He grasped it perfectly. It's a colossal, tiresome LARP by people who've never actually managed anything in their lives let alone a "commune".
It's so incompetent, it's not even fit to be a symbol.

>>43343
Since you did an indepth research already, could you be more specific?

>>43344
Their "garden" is laughable and disorganised, and their internal politics is nothing more than a giant neoliberal race to see who can be the biggest victim to be included on the council thanks to a quota. (Minority quota, women quota, felon quota, homeless quota and so on.)
It's everything wrong with the American "left" collected into one big pile of incompetence.

If this is a symbol of what the citizenry is capable of without the government, then I'd much rather have the boot up my ass.

>>43341
So what is it symbolic of then? I can gather my buddies in the kitchen, we will get drunk and start philosophizing that we don't need the police, would that also be symbolic? I mean we have held this territory (kitchen) under our control for a long period (four hours) without being policed, would that be a clear evidence that police can be abolished?

>>43343
Yes, of course it's a LARP - it's pure symbolism. But if you criticize a fantasy larp for not being a science fiction larp what's the point of the critic? Also it's perfectly obvious that the executive forces could restore their order there again if they were told to.

>>43346

>I can gather my buddies in the kitchen, we will get drunk and start philosophizing that we don't need the police, would that also be symbolic?

Idk, did the police come to your guys kitchen sometimes and killed people? Because then it would be.

>>43346
your kitchen is not a public place patrolled by police
It's symbolic because a small territory is atm unchecked by the state, people saying it's a law free zone or "those are anarchists" back my proof that it is taken as symbol.
They try to organize an alternative and so far, it has its territory. That is the symbolic character, it got taken away and handed to the people, now if that really works for the people is an entirely different question that will be shown by the future. Personally, I don't expect much and I'm not a fan of AZs but your critique fails nonetheless given that you project goals onto that area which are not intended by the people occupying it. Further more you equaled police with protection which is logically wrong. Police can be a form (a special organization) of protection though.

>>43345
Well, firstly, I agree with you that this is not how you change the world and the left got greenyfied, we can see it quite well. That is why it is mostly and only symbolic. But the left won't win by being symbolic and that is why I dispise this as only tatic the left seems to have.
The garden, I'm sure, won't provide. If it is a victim fest, maybe. It could very well be.
Anyway, I still think it has symbolic character as zone that is unchecked and "self organized", but if you read what I wrote to belarus, it won't be what people think it might is. But tbh I don't think that all people there are so stupid and naive.

It's in the news, it is public and it is discussed, don't tell me it has no symbolic value. I don't believe it will work out as new little state that can sustain itself by autarc production (which state can these days?) and I also don't believe in it being the start of a revolution. It's a project I think, and that says quite much.

What I don't like about CHAZ is that what was supposed to be a protest in support of black people, fair treatment of them, and issues pertaining to their specific community, was opportunistically hijacked by white middle class college kids into some kind of anarchist larp. It feels like a diversion, and a stealing of the spotlight from the black community by the urban middle class whites.
And that's if one gives credence to their outward political beliefs. What it looks like instead is either a 2 minutes hate style session of cathartic psychosis, or an excuse to go summer camping as an adult.

>>43347
OK, fair enough. The police doesn't come into my kitchen (because we are good boys, we behave and we do not disturb other people after 23:00) but some of the policemen are responsible for disappearances of Lukashenko's political opponents during his rule (and some more policemen are responsible for covering it all up) which in my opinion is more disturbing than some random dude getting killed once in a while in the US, especially considering that we have 1.5 times more policemen on every 100000 citizens than them, and that without counting the Armed Forces of the Mininstry of Internal Affairs (our police force is actually much bigger than the military; really shows what threats is Lukashenko more afraid of, internal or external). And protests do happen here sometimes. Do people protest the police? Nope, they protest Lukashenko and his clique who created and nurtured this system, because they understand that the police are just hired workers being used for villainous purposes by the government.

>>43348
I don't "project" anything, I merely pointed out that the supposed symbol doesn't really work so well since it's not exactly clear what does it symbolize. To me it looks more like some sort of hippie festival where Westerners exercise in being "not indifferent", to some random conservative Murrican it's probably "them librul pinkos are doin' dumb shit again", and to Trump & Co it's more of a simple case of civil disobedience rather than a political movement to be concerned about.

>Further more you equaled police with protection which is logically wrong. Police can be a form (a special organization) of protection though.

Well, if you have a society, you have some rules by which this society lives – laws. Laws are pretty useless by themselves unless they're being enforced, so you have to have some organization to do it. Whatever you call this organization – police, civil guard, militia (we don't actually have the police here, we have the militia: legacy of the Soviet Union where they changed the name to avoid negative connotations of the police in Tsarist Russia; ironically, in Russia they've changed the name back again, to avoid negative connotations of the police in Soviet Union XDDDDDDD) – its purpose remains the same.

>>43352

>its purpose remains the same.

yes ofc, protection. But you can have for instance a neighborhood patrol or paid police officers driving around in a car or on foot, either way these officers have gone through a certain training (not all police trainings are the same). So how a protection entity reacts to a case that calls for them to be active, is very different based on the form of organization and training (or lack thereoff). German and US police react different to the same situation I suspect, because traning is different. Maybe I'm wrong. But I don't think police training is the same all over the globe, that does not mean that similarities and standarts exist.
And that is all I want to say. You think that all forms of protection are the same and that is where you are wrong, patrolling soldiers that pcoket check ever human and shot a chicken thief on sight is also a form of protection.
Simply: being Anti-police is not to be identified with anti-protection, but that is what you concluded in the inital posting.

>it's not exactly clear what does it symbolize.

Well, a symbol is not pinned down to one meaning, it can symbolize different things according to different people as you point out yourself in the next sentences btw.

Yeah, I agree it's more a hippie festival, AZ style green politics, terrible and probably like brick pointed out a sell out already of the BLM goals, a corruption, but for these (white) people it might be a coming alternative or a new model society in small scope. For Trump it's da bad terrorists and anarchists threatening his rule. For BLM activists it might be a sign what is wrong with whites as allies. It represents something, even to you, that is what a symbol does. It's an occupied space of a few blocks, it's also a symbol. The fact that we all get worked up over it I think makes it clear.

>>43352

>Lukashenko's political opponents during his rule

Well, nobody thinks Trump ordered police officers to kill black people on patrol.
Comparing apples with pears.

Zack Snyder 300 Battle of Thermopylae type shit going on in the Himalayas right now

>>43340

>so Americans still have soldiers and taxes, even though they fought a war against British soldiers because of taxes? That's kinda pathetic

Way to miss the point entirely. I think that you as a former USSR Slav should be able to ascertain the deal about all that. It has nothing to do with rebelling against the concept of security entirely, but more so our infamously shitty fucking cops who are basically a lawless marauding gang at this point. I mean I really don't think you guys are getting the problem here particularly if you get most of your info from some kind of vierkanal copcucks. They steal billions of dollars a year from us in our personal property. That is on top of wasting our taxes on military equipment with which to brutalize us and I do mean they literally get budgets for just city police departments like the LAPD and NYPD that's higher than your entire country's military budget. That is part of why people are demanding they be fucking defunded because you can see plainly some of the shittiness of average Americans who get price gouged left and right and rather than doing shit like fixing our infrastructure or towards the arts, public parks, healthcare, education, utilities etc bearing in mind literally everything is privatized in this country even a lot of our jails but we still get shafted as taxpayers by the companies getting subsidies so we basically pay the bill twice, once with our taxes and a second time when you pay for the product a lot of which lines private pockets of oligarchs and wannabe oligarchs it is going to these cops so they can act like cowardly dickheads, and I do mean cowardly because I'm never going to let them live Parkland down.

No, what I'm talking about is the unconstitutional bullshit like asset forfeiture laws on top of those budgets. Basically in a lot of jurisdictions the cops can effectively accuse your property of a crime instead of you, which cannot be defended against, and then they can steal your shit even if you havent done anything wrong. The cops literally take more shit from people each year than every thief and burglar in the country. Cars, cash, houses, boats, guns, luxury items, electronics, random knick knacks and they don't have to give it back even if you've been found innocent.

Meanwhile they have the faggot Fraternal Order of the Police and all those shitty unions on top of the blue wall of silence and the general gang mentality of these people protecting them even if they do blatantly illegal shit provided they never fuck over one of their own, but heavens help you if you ratted a cop out to IA or the media or whoever. Then expect to be fired at best, if not actively fucked over or killed. Have you seen Better Call Saul? Do you remember "mah boy, they killed mah boy"? Yeah shit like that happens. There's a reason why people like Chris Dorner flipped out who actually tried to do the right thing and by the books. So basically we have no recourse when cops do shitty things to us.

CHAZ is a rejection of these shit cops basically.

>not self sufficient

Dude it's a public park and a few surrounding buildings they barricaded like a week ago what the fuck do you want from them? They're already planting community gardens apparently. Are you expecting the industrial capacity to already be quantifiable with a known amount of wheat output?

>>43341
The German gets it.

>>43342
Really I think it speaks to a much deeper American cultural narrative whether some people like that or not. It's the same mentality that got us to march all the way out to California and committing genocide along the way. We just want everybody else to fuck off. Why is this so hard to understand? I just want mah own damn land and for people to just piss off and leave me alone. I can sympathize with the CHAZ settlers because of that. It reminds me of that hoboville, what's it called The Slab? Someplace out West. Or all these micro nations and communes. With mass surveillance and everybody thinking it's just fucking dandy for the NSA to know when and where they piss and the overwhelmingly oppressive lack of freedoms in this country I for one am happy that there's still some people in this country willing to send the government and their crooked agents to hui regardless of if it's for stupid reasons or not. It's why I never really gave a shit about the Bundy ranch telling everyone to go fuck themselves either and them getting into a standoff with the police.

Just stop fucking with us. It's that simple and by God, if you do you better bring artillery and the people doing the sending I hope they get sufficient artillery too to make the tyrants sit on bottles.

>>43328

>whatever stupid opinion piece that cements your preconceived notions of the world

This little bit of snark was a nice touch, OP. Thanks :3

>>43358

>pic

love this figue. One of the best from anthro pirds I seen. Realistic and I like proportions. Dunno from where they are but I have Russian rooster

>>43350
Yes and no. Like I said our police are shitty which impacts just about everyone except rich white people. It's just that part of what BLM is about is the police are so, so much shittier to them than everybody else but at the same time BLM is addressing the issue of race in general in this country and likewise that's why chicanos are else in on it. In terms of the cops we've all gotten tired of this shit and CHAZ itself isn't a bunch of bougie white kids coopting the movement regardless what Fox News is trying to portray at that particular moment. I think that a lot of different aggravations have snowballed in this country and that the whole SARS 2.0 Viral Boogaloo thing and the economy going to shit on top of it should've shown you guys all the very deep cracks in American society and it did so quite plainly for all of us to see the things we all pretty much knew was there but either downplayed or ignored it particularly regarding race and class.

The overwhelming majority of victims fallen to the virus have been poor people on top of medical staff and of those a massively disproportionate have been black so that is part of why everybody is on edge even more than usual and God help us all if there is one more issue that comes up during this egregiously incompetent mismanagement turning into a cascade failure of our society, including--wait for it--a second surge with us all being told to fuck off and keep making rich people money while the virus burns through us, more economic failures, and the government finally just outright telling us to fuckoff nobody is getting bailouts except corporations/bankers/politicians friends/landlords and shut up and get back to work, and really god help us if that ends up including some seriously stupid evil shit like evicting us en masse when everybody gets charged their back rents/mortgages all at once and can't afford to pay for it. Then we can really see some hilariously bad shit go down when that triggers a housing market crash and even more chaos and rioting in the streets when suddenly you've got another ten million homeless people in the middle of a virus wave.

I mean really these have all been things simmering just beneath the surface for awhile now and I for one have zero confidence in Americans handling it in a cool headed and rational manner, including most importantly our leadership, the sole not-retarded ones probably being lone voices in the wilderness who get ignored. If shit hits the fan hard enough we could be entering "oligarchs flee to New Zealand territory after liquidating their remaining assets" territory in the worst case scenarios.

I think the question is going to be whether the people themselves even retain the capacity anymore to band together and unite as a people, or whether we just keep going down that road we've been on which has been simmering at least since the George H.W. Bush administration and expressed itself under various eruptions like OKC bombing, Waco, Rodney King riots, things like that, all of which has seemingly been coming to a head and which the election of Trump was clearly signaling to a degree that I don't think anyone really understood they couldn't just fan the partisan flames and have the usual bread and circus divide and rule tactics while peacefully milking money out of us anymore. That little virus has really just been a Black Hand assassin ultimately

>>43361
What an ebin figurine, would buy if reasonably priced.

>>43337
I can't take it seriously because I knew a guy in school called Charles, shortened to Chaz and he was a fuggen idyet :-DDD

>>43364
I'm surprised you haven't seen this before. I've had it saved for years as "chaos god of proofs.png" or some similar phrasing.

>and behold I will propose a final solution to the keine question

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/amphtml/addybaird/florida-woman-and-15-friends-coronavirus-bar-night
I really just don't get why people are even going out. I had a sudden urge for restaurant food for the first time since this pandemic began yesterday but I'm sure as shit not going to go out eating or drinking anything in a crowded public space.

>>43358

>defunding the police for the arts

Yeah just what America needs more of, shitty grant art that pushes a woketard agenda

Just a quick sidenote:
Orbán’s government actually declared the state of emergency to be over as of today. This also means that they handed back the special powers that were deemed undemocratic by different sources.

Though they drafted a new law that would allow the country to go into a state of medical emergency on the recommendation of the Chief Medical Officer.

The Operative Group that was tasked with handling the epidemic will continue its work, but will no longer hold daily press conferences.

>>43395
I'd rather my tax money get spent on PBS documentaries or Sesame Street than cops acquiring Iraq war weapons tbh. Speaking of which I think it's clear that corporate documentaries is a death spiral. When everything is done for consumer eyeballs you get The Making of Sharknado XXXTREME Edition sponsored by Goga Gola. Our cinema in general has been in the gutter for years and years for similar reason.

Despite the thread by that Brazilian done to rile up the userbase, I would like to give my personal thanks to this Ernst here:
>>43126

Best take in the entire thread.

Also, are you Canadian? What brings you to the US?

Activists vandalized Churchill’s statue in Hungary.
It’s just that they weren’t BLM activists like in the rest of the world.
I have a feeling we’re not in tune with the rest of the western world.

>>43408
I don't like Churchill because he closed EM2 program when it was already done and moved do fucking FAL becuase "muh nato" and then US of A after fail with M14 adopted 5.56 AR15 faimily and then britain remained looser with their semi-auto boom sticks untill they tried to do bullpup again but it become total disaster

>>43408
Why is Hungary so right-wing? That country is one of the few places in Europe where RAC/NS bands can have open air concerts unmolested and the local Antifa has virtually no street presence to speak of. The only other two countries where such concerts could take place would be Ukraine or Italy, although the latter doesn't have open air concerts for such bands.

>>43412
I'd assume that a large part in it is because they're still butthurt at Communist Russia. Poland has a lot of the same issues. It is also a place where I'm sure they got lots and lots of funding for their right wing over the years from the Wect so it actually became a heavily developed network on top of just generally cultivate the local butthurt at Communists. Plus keep in mind that Hungarians joined the Nazis so they'd not have the same kind of experience as poor invaded Poland.

I'm sure there are other reasons but that's kind of my take on it, of basically the same sort of reasons as why a lot of Asia is filled to the brim with Jihadists right now. Not entirely sure why Italy isn't also as hard right considering they were an epicenter for fostering that kind of thing.

>>43413

>Plus keep in mind that Hungarians joined the Nazis so they'd not have the same kind of experience as poor invaded Poland.

No we did not. We joined the Nazis for a multitude of reasons.
One because politicians hoped that a full revision of the Trianon treaty could be realised with the help of anti-status quo powers like Germany. (Frankly a low IQ reason)
Two because after the Vienna awards the fate of the “reclaimed” territories hung on a colossal dick sucking contest against Romania and the final nail in the coffin was the “Bombing of Kassa” when unidentified planes bombed the town of Kassa, which served as a casus belli against the USSR. (Though the German war plans didn’t count on assistance from the Honvédség, and they were generally surprised.)
Also add that our general staff was pro-German and that we were economically dependent on Germany because of the economic Clearing System the Germans utilized to economically subjugate the smaller states in Europe.

Fucking shit cunt politicians are fucking with university fees again here. Back when they all went it was free, then they started making you take a loan, and now if you want to study something that they don't personally deem 'useful' you're going to pay up to double what you do now. But they're so wonderful that if you study something that they deem 'useful' alongside your horrible useless things like history. Of course, what they deem 'useful' extends only to STEM because who needs shit like examining society and its history? That just gets in the way of the powers that be trying to rewrite history and uphold social ills for their own benefit. Plus it's a massive attack on lower income people. You from a working class background and want to educate yourself, but aren't really STEM-minded? Too bad, you aren't 'worthy' of an education.

Just burn it all down man.

>>43419
This is 100% how they should do it but with exceptions for whatever # of exceptional students in the social sciences and humanities that are necessary to be professors and teachers.

Why should institutions exist to support people in the pursuit of "useless" knowledge, beyond the small number of scholars needed to teach students and maintain the traditions of higher study in the humanities? One of the big problems in America is the huge number of over-educated morons who have degrees in subjects that contribute nothing to their skills or knowledge. Every superfluous psych or English or gender studies major thinks that they deserve something more than the average working class bydlo, and frothes and rages at the thought of having to work alongside them at normal shitty jobs.

>Too bad, you aren't 'worthy' of an education.

Most people aren't worthy of higher education. If you want to study something like engineering or biology that will increase the productivity of society as a whole, then you are justified in expecting society to shunt some of its productive gains towards your education. But you can't expect that if you just want a degree because that's what every other striver is doing (and you're definitely not the kind of backwards rube who wouldn't even get a degree), but you don't go in having any idea what you really want to do, so you just pick psych or English or history with a focus on the Chicano experience.

Some of those people will go on to be English or history teachers, and a much smaller proportion will go on to be academics. And even if I think most academia in social science and the humanities is if anything a net negative for society and the individuals involved, I still recognize that it has to exist in some form. But the idea that anyone should be able to go to college and study anything they want and have other people pay for it - no matter what - is ridiculous. We don't need this many social science and humanities grads, and the government should not take people's money to pay for things that have no use.

>You from a working class background and want to educate yourself, but aren't really STEM-minded?

Besides all of my earlier points, colleges are mostly redundant these days. You can learn virtually anything that you can on campus from the comfort of your own home, with free resources on the internet, public libraries, and purchased books that amount to vastly less than what you will pay for the overpriced textbooks that you have to buy at university. You can live in a Nigerian slum and learn more than the average Harvard student just by reading pirated books and articles. Hell, JSTOR upped their free articles to 100 per month recently, so you don't even need to be a pirate.

College is a racket, a racket that drains money from students and/or society for, in many cases, no benefit to either. Unless you're in a field that requires a mentor-apprentice relationship, or frequent lab work, there's no real need for it beyond letting some asswipe committee give you a certificate that you can wave in people's faces to show that you know some things. As soon as someone comes out with a degree-equivalent certification process that lets people test based on their self-acquired knowledge, the educational aspect of college (as opposed to research) will be almost completely obsolete.

>>43420
Yeah, who needs to study the past and present of society? Absolutely no value whatsoever to that kind of knowledge in society. The only way that matters is how much money we can make off of your education. Obviously, the only education that deserves any attention are those that line the state's pocket. They can fuck right off with this "we decide what is and is not a worthy pursuit of knowledge" bullshit.

>Most people aren't worthy of higher education.

And making it a matter of ability AND money is somehow more fair than just a matter of ability? So someone who is rich is more worthy to study history than someone who is less well off, despite having the same aptitude for the subject? That kind of classist shit is why I'm saying to burn it all down. Collaborating with the rich won't make them like you more, jussayin.

>>43420
You do realize that creative fields are some of our most absolutely massive industries and the nexus of our soft power, right? If you really want to get down to it about cutting all the fat then basically if you were unemployed at any time during this pandemic then you are, by definition, nonessential and part of the totally useless bloat that doesnt help society function and be productive

>>43421

>Yeah, who needs to study the past and present of society?

I spend most of my free time reading history books. I said in my post that I still want enough people studying it as their concentration to provide the country with teachers and a functioning academy.

There just need to be limits. There should be X number of slots for history majors, as for most social sciences and humanities, and they should go to the most capable and dedicated students who display an interest in those fields. Anyone beyond that should receive no public funding whatsoever for their study. Poor people most of all should not be wasting their time studying at college for degrees that have very little chance of improving their ability to make a living. Note that one effect of this policy would be to improve the prospects for poor people who actually qualify for the programs, as they will have less competition from middling-intelligent graduates with better social skills who can network better despite being worse historians.

>So someone who is rich is more worthy to study history than someone who is less well off, despite having the same aptitude for the subject?

If their aptitude is at the level of "you really have no business wasting your time in this oversaturated field", then yes, rich people should have an easier time wasting 4 years of their life. That's what rich people do, isn't it?

If you're interested in history but don't have the aptitude to make real contributions as a scholar or teacher (note that the bar for teachers would be relatively low, as we need a lot of them), then you can just read history books in your spare time. Why do you need a degree in it if it's extremely unlikely that you'll find a job in the field?

>>43422

>You do realize that creative fields are some of our most absolutely massive industries and the nexus of our soft power, right?

What do these creative fields have to do with college? Psych majors don't do anything for our soft power. The kind of culture that emerges from American English departments is the kind of unreadable modern novel that only appeals to other English majors living in NYC.

Our soft power derives from film, television, and music. I am all for giving anyone who wants it full ride at a music school (as humanity grows increasingly obsolete, performance art is one of the few things that will never be readily automatized, if only because humans will feel weird without someone real on the other end). Way too many people go to film or drama school to ever be useful, but you kind of need to cast a wide net to catch the few gems, so cast wide the net evermore.

>If you really want to get down to it about cutting all the fat then basically if you were unemployed at any time during this pandemic then you are, by definition, nonessential and part of the totally useless bloat that doesnt help society function and be productive

I am viscerally opposed to the concept of declaring a human's existence as nonessential or obsolete, but this must be thought of as separate from their economic and social function. Everyone needs to be taken care of to a certain level. But as part of that mission, the state should not dedicate resources to educating people in specialized knowledge that produces no gain for the individuals involved or society. It's a social need to have history teachers and historians. It is not a social need to have legions of history and English and psych majors who cannot use the knowledge imparted by their degree for any job available to them. If those people have little aptitude for those subjects yet still want to study them, they can do so in their free time, which will ideally be increased significantly via legislation that reduces work hours and increases time off.

The program I envision might have much less of an effect than you might think. Ideally, we need more English and history teachers, and if salaries are properly increased for public school teachers, it should be an attractive option for anyone who loves literature or history enough to devote their college years to it. We probably have a bit too many English majors, but for all I know we may not have enough history majors if we actually taught history properly at the secondary level.

Really, my main problem is with psych and PC studies departments. Society needs relatively few psychologists, and 0 gender activist-scholars (the study of gender should be a part of detached and scientific anthropology). It terrified me at my own graduation how many of my peers had majored in this stuff compared to anything else, and I went to a very good public uni with strong departments in every field.

>>43420

>colleges are mostly redundant these days

If only employers would understand that. Quite often they require uni diploma even for almost menial jobs like maintaining a small computer network, even though a high school kid would be able to do that. The situation is somewhat better in private enterprises, AFAIK, especially in IT, where you can land a job if you do good at the interview, and you can even get a promotion later if you work diligently. The state-owned companies are not as lax, though. And it makes me feel bad for college-educated people (colleges here are not like in Murica: a college degree is not considered a higher education, but more like an upgraded high school one) who are, in my experience are, in my experience, every bit as good specialists as uni graduates, but they still have a lot of problems with employment.

Another question is the actual quality of the higher education. I dunno about the West, but in here you can buy your way through 90% of uni curriculum, and for the remaining 10% you would have to either actually study or do some butt-licking. I'm pretty sure that quite a lot of my former groupmates graduated without having a single clue about programming. Now that doesn't sound too bad, maybe they will learn as they go or they will get a sinecure through their connections (through "blat", as we call it here), but what was the point of all that time wasted? Like one of old professors half-jokingly said to us in our second year of uni, "If it were for me, I would just give diplomas to all of you and kick you out to work. What's the point of keeping you here for five years?" Later I actually talked about the uselessness of higher education with another professor (really cool guy; one of those Soviet-educated people who really know their shit and not just climbed up the ranks by writing useless papers and being some sort of Party functionary). I claimed that anybody can just buy, say, a textbook on Java, read through it and then do programming as good as any uni graduate. He mostly agreed, but he pointed out one important aspect of higher education: getting used to teamwork. Back then he didn't convince me, but now I think that he has a point: you can't go far if you are bad at working with other people, and articles and books from the Internet won't ever teach you that.

Oh, and as for the Western "top-tier" universities, like Cambridge, Oxford, Ivy league etc., the whole reason for them to be rated so highly in my opinion is not because they give some sort of "superior" education (I really doubt that in our age of unbridled information exchange they can do that much better than some community college in a small town), but because you can get valuable connections and make acquaintances there who can help you later in your carreer.

>>43422
I believe that he wasn't saying that we don't need those people with "useless" degrees at all, but rather that we don't need that many. People are often afraid to study hard sciences and they go for seemingly easier ones like psychology (and let's be frank, they really are easier, at least in the way they are being taught in unis). But then it turns out nobody really needs them, so they either go to work to retail, get jobs that don't really fit them through connections (my dad's former boss had a history degree, and he worked in natural gas infrastructure; but that's not all: not only he was clueless about the work specifics, but he was also as dumb as a brick and he was a total asshole; imagine working under someone like that), or somehow manage to convince the government to create more workplaces for them and they just sit there doing jack shit and getting money. Here for example we have problems with overabundance of lawyers and economists (and judging by the amount of newspapers being printed, journalists; D-g I hate those fuckers, less useful than psychologists and more self-important than artists). The unemployment problem would probably be alleviated somewhat if they would be able to create their own businesses freely, but we have a kolkhoz chairman and a total sovok for a president, who is allergic to any kind of private enterprise, and even if he allows it, he consequently milks it dry with methods nothing short of racketeering. So, some sort of control over how many students of every specialty are necessary for the state's current needs might be beneficial for the economy.

Oh, and also, what the hell is "creative fields"? Are you saying that psychology, sociology or art history are somehow more creative than physics and engineering? Fuck off with that bullshit, mate.

>>43424
So you want to re-gentrify higher education, and keep the working classes 'in their place' essentially? But if they get thrown a bone, they'll be 'better off'. Yeah nah, up against the wall comrade.

>I spend most of my free time reading history books.

Reading the book does not mean you're engaging in history. History itself is a process, of which books are the product. I'm guessing you're the American who is vehemently opposed to the idea of historical theory, because your good judgment is objective enough?

>Why do you need a degree in it if it's extremely unlikely that you'll find a job in the field?

Because I want to study it at that higher level, under the guidance of professionals instead of just blindly consuming books without the skills to meaningfully engage with them. Education should not be pursued merely for economic benefit. The skills learned in a humanities course are very easily applied to other aspects of one's life. Hell, the Union Hall was a place of education during the great depression in many cases, teaching philosophy and history among other things. They were deemed important subjects for helping people understand how to fight to further their cause.

Let's also consider the prices. At the former expense, it was around $20,000 which was paid back over time. The government only actually got out of pocket around $3000. That means that it costs a similar amount to a 500lb iron bomb. Make it a guided weapon and you start getting to the point where it's significantly cheaper to educate someone in the humanities than it is to purchase a single bomb. To me, educating people is a more sound investment than buying explosives to drop on the middle east, but only one of these things is targeted by spending reform.

>>43425

>colleges here are not like in Murica: a college degree is not considered a higher education, but more like an upgraded high school one

Same here. High school is worth squat. You want to go into a trade, you go to tertiary education, an apprenticeship is 50% on-campus. You want to go into academia, you go into tertiary education of a different sort. They gutted TAFE which is the trade and diploma level one and have come after the next step up for people who aren't STEM proficient.

>>43426

>So you want to re-gentrify higher education

If gentleman idiots want to fork over money to get vanity degrees, so be it. They help fund the people who have the chance to actually do things with their degree.

>Because I want to study it at that higher level, under the guidance of professionals instead of just blindly consuming books without the skills to meaningfully engage with them.

And historical theory cannot be taught by books? By lectures posted online?

>Education should not be pursued merely for economic benefit.

No, of course not. But you can't expect society to pay for your education if the benefit to society is just one person who knows more about the process of history. If that is necessary knowledge, then everyone should be taught it (such as at Union Halls, or through other community learning programs). We can even increase the quota of paid-for meritocratic students to account for the necessary teaching positions.

But if the nuances of historical theory are not required for every adult in the country, it stands to reason that little marginal value is gained by giving someone an in-depth college education. The only goal of the degree would be personal edification. Personal edification is great, but it can be derived from personal study just as well as college in almost all subjects, and it is not enough to justify putting someone through an intensive 4-year program on the public's dime.

>Let's also consider the prices.

The cost to the state is fundamentally irrelevant, although in the case of the US the prices have become so distorted that free college could be a major fiscal burden if major reforms were not taken to reduce the cost.

The main point of restricting access to oversaturated fields would be to prevent people from coming out of college with starry eyes and ambitions that cannot be fulfilled. This is a huge recipe for personal anguish as well as social unrest. If there are 1000 new psychology jobs per year, and 10000 new psych majors, 9000 of them will not be able to properly use their degree. It is better to just prevent them from studying psychology in the first place. Let the 1-2000 most promising psych majors continue on past entrance exams or probatory freshman classes, and tell the rest to go into STEM or vocational school or find a job (or history, if they can prove their aptitude for it). Better not to waste 4 years of your youth on something that will bring you little to no benefit.

On top of that is principle. It's bad enough that a bunch of morons are graduating with overly inflated opinions of themselves and their prospects. I have a college degree, I'm no burger flipper!* It's worse that society is funding its own degradation.

*I know you have a degree and flip burgers. The problem is the people who think they're too good for normal work because of their stupid fucking degree in psych or English from a shitty overpriced university that barely teaches you anything. I have met more psych major proto-Karens than I can count who have that air of "I'm educated and therefore important" and go on to do nothing more than data entry or basic copywriting or any other simplistic desk-job shit that any slightly-above-average high school student could do. Needless to say, they find data entry meaningless, and find meaning in endless social justice posturing and office gossip power politics. The fact that they went to college has made them and society worse.

>>43427

>Same here. High school is worth squat.

Same in America! Which is why we should be improving our high schools instead of worrying about sending more people to college.

>>43428
Yeah, a lot of those skills are important and should be kicked down the tree some (a lot). They won't though because it makes for an educated population who'd pull down the corrupt as shit system instead of one that's easy to push around with bullshit.

>But you can't expect society to pay for your education if the benefit to society is just one person who knows more about the process of history.

But society is happy to pay the bailouts for corporations? Foot the bill for jingoist expeditions for oil barons? To militarise the police that disproportionately target the lower classes? Someone wants to study the Humanities is a bridge to far though? I think that people need to get their priorities straight when it comes to cutting spending. Cut the bullshit that's killing your people way before you start thinking about cutting the stuff that's investing in the minds of people.

>And historical theory cannot be taught by books? By lectures posted online?

To an extent it can, but it can be taught in the same way that an electrician can teach themselves. They'll get it but they will have a harder time, and will miss out on a lot of the important bits that arise from the discourses you are forced to have during study. A lot of my best work was based on discussions I had with an academic in a similar field which were revolving around that subject. You don't get that from books or videos. You especially don't get it if those books and videos are not historiography but history. They aren't the same but you can't really properly study the latter without the former.

>But if the nuances of historical theory are not required for every adult in the country

I would say that to an extent, it is vital information in a modern society though. It's a field all about understanding how history is written, why it is written and how to unpack it. A lot of things get spouted as history and are eaten up without question because it was in a book, or in a documentary. It doesn't need to be historiography specifically, but that kind of critical thinking is vital to a healthy society if you ask me.

Tbh, my principle is that society can suck a fucking dick with regards to what I, or someone else does with their life. I won't never see my money's worth from the taxes I pay, in fact I'll see it flushed down the drain to corporations, war and corruption. If someone wants to 'waste their time', then let them. If you're worried about karens, then I'm also worried about wannabe robber barons in the yuppie population that infested the STEM pools when I was in university. You lot have got just as much human garbage as anyone else in your labs.

Also, in Australia we have a ~72% employment rate for degrees. It's not like we're at 10% or something like your examples propose. Even if humanities do have a worse rate, they also have more people so it should skew the value more but it doesn't so the humanities rate must likewise be pretty good. This shit is entirely ideological, pushed by our fundie reactionary government.

Wanna give my pinches to the issue of education:

1) The issue of soft power that was spoken about. Enlish majors or drama school people will work for the TV for instance. Many subjects that are not STEM teach you certain skills, like reading close, working for yourself on a certain topic (research abilities), ways of thinking etc. These are widely applicated. There really are no jobs like engineer for STEM for humanities or social science, ofc some classics like working at a museum or something. But besides this narrow path, the economy has an interest in certain knowledge and skills. Public Relations would be the perfect example. You don't go into PR with a STEM degree I'd say. These days you don't make the PR yourself, you have people doing that for you. political consulting is not only done by economics. History is still a relevevant issue and you don't want a biologist deal with problems that arise out of public discussions about something historic (process, event etc).

2) The more important point I want to make is the autodidactic path that seems like an alternative without loss. I fiercly disagree with that. Ofc somebody who will spent some years reading books will be educated in a sense. But like the Aussi I can only say that discussions improve your thinking massively. You have experts you can ask and a major is systematically thought out, so that you really explore a field in a way. It's not so much about the WHAT but the HOW that is taught in universities. You learn to take fields systematically. My already vast knowledge in comparison to some other people (still being small in the end) comes from experiencing three subjects and reading a lot including philosophy which I did not study but plays a major role in most humanities and also in the qualitative social science. Even in the quantitaive you have to interpret data which usually is based on abstract thoughts/knowledge.
There are people who don't get much of what is taught, but in the end an autodidact is missing a whole structure in which he or she could be embedded and that is systematically thought out thanks to meta-thinking (you won't go anywhere with out that kind of thinking) which is also constantly evolving. You get tools and frames for your thinking. And you need these tools for reading books and engage with them more thoroughly. Now I don't say a a non-academics cannot be critical. But when you know about the concept of the episteme you might judge a book very different from what a non-taught will do. Reading about the Cold War is nice and interesting but when you don't know how that book is made technically and how history is written (literally) you missing what is taught to future historians in university. You miss basically what is the core of academic the craft. You can agree or disagree with Heidegger, given you understood more or less the key points of his philosophy. But if you don't know what he is really doing from a meta(-philosophical) perspective, you are missing an important dimension of reading philosophy.
I read Dugin atm and without my academic ambitions I wouldn't be able to judge what and how he is doing what he is doing: he lays out concepts that call for action, he tries to legitimate something and now how does he do it is the question, ofc this calls for knowing how arguments are made, but what also author he cites in what contexts etc. I wouldn't be able to make a judgment of the books trajectory if I hadn't studied history, sociology, read many books from and about philosophers (many of them are taught in seminars outside of the philosophy majors) and also the literary studies are of help here. The same applies to reading Deleuze, which is an author of a very different calibre, but it's the tools and accumulated experience which benefited heavily from going to university and visiting seminars. It makes a big difference if you read a book in the evening (or whenever) everday for yourself and without systematic approaches to the books you select or if you read the amount of 2 books in a week and discuss these texts while being systematic about the whole approach an reflecting what you are doing there as well. Via university you enter the academic discourse very differently from what and autodidact will do.

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/06/19/belarus-accuses-west-russia-of-destabilization-ahead-of-polls-a70635

>President Alexander Lukashenko on Friday accused foreign powers of seeking to destabilize Belarus as he intensifies a crackdown on the opposition ahead of August's election.
>"The focus of all political interests is on Belarus. Both from the West and the East," the 65-year-old strongman told officials in a thinly veiled reference to Russia on Friday.

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/06/19/belarus-leaders-election-rival-detained-as-crackdown-intensifies-a70619

>Belarussian authorities on Thursday detained President Alexander Lukashenko's rival ahead of August's election as Minsk intensified a crackdown on the opposition.
>The detention of Viktor Babaryko, a 56-year-old former banker, on suspicion of financial crimes came after authorities jailed other critics including prominent opposition politician Mikola Statkevich ahead of an election in which Lukashenko is seeking a sixth term.

A lot of exciting events seem to be happening around the coming Belarussian elections and the sudden rise of Babaryko seems to be threatening Lukashenko's throne. I don't know what to make of this but I wonder if I could reach the Belarussian Ernst for comment on how Belarusians see the incoming election. Also I wonder about how they tie into these anti-Moscow comments of electoral interfering. With opposition getting jailed and:

>Vitali Shkliarov, a Harvard University fellow and Belarus specialist, said Lukashenko was wrestling with a combination of record low ratings, a tough economic situation and the shocks of the coronavirus epidemic.
>Shkliarov said Lukashenko's administation chose to crackdown on the opponents and accuse Moscow of interfering in the country's domestic affairs in a possible effort to get the West on its side.

Seems like happenings are coming, what will all these protests and the authorities feeling the need to change their approach in dealing with the opposition.

>>43436
I'm gonna take a guess that Luka is just doing the usual swing away from Moscow to the wect so that both parties start sucking their dick to try and 'win' the country that has no real intention of actually picking a side.

>>43436
Eh, happenings happen before every presidential election, but in the end Lukashenko gets 80+% of votes and his opponents get jail time. Although this time he really got hard on his rivals even before the election (beside Babaryko he got in detention another potential candidate, Sergei Tsikhanovsky, and now his wife is running for office instead of him), and the people's reaction to Lukashenko's assholishness is more prominent and not reserved to just our regular (ineffectual) opposition (it's in Russian, but it's mostly photos anyway):
https://news.tut.by/elections/689398.html

And blaming everyone but himself is Lukashenko's favorite pastime, so you shouldn't find it surprising. I'm not really sure what he wants to gain with it: he can't earn any points with the West this way because they don't really care about what Russia does in their sphere of influence, he can't earn the trust of the people this way because they automatically treat everything he says as bullshit (he pretty much openly treats Belarus as his estate nowadays and its people as his serfs, which doesn't give him much popularity), and he spoils an already pretty rotten relationship with Russia even more (note that Belgazprombank, Babaryko's former employer, is owned by Russians mostly, and Luka forcibly changed the top management in the light of the recent investigation).

Well, there are several scenarios this election can go. The most likely one is that Luka wins with overwhelming 90% or somesuch, and any following uprising gets harshly suppressed by army and militia. Another one, much more unlikely, is that army and militia refuse to support him and he gets deposed by the people. And another, even more unlikely, is that his clique, understanding that supporting him might get them in hot water, silently pushes him aside in some way (up to assassination) and installs some other figurehead instead.

But yeah, seeing that so many people are willing to stand up for their rights is giving even such an apolitical, voting against all candidates coward as myself some hope. Gonna vote for Tsepkalo on the 9th, just in case.

>>43416
I once heard this as a response from a Hungarian. Thoughts?

>If you overview the last 150 years of European history you can identify a set of issues which are called "questions". Greek question, German question, Italian question, etc, all boil down to ethnic conflict. In both world wars these questions played prominent roles and shaped post-war borders.

>Eventually most of these questions got settled, usually through forceful annexations, deportatations or genocide.

>After WW2 through US-USSR pressure Europe began to pretend these questions have been solved, which have been uglily proven wrong in the Yugoslav wars.

>But there is one questions that hasn't been effectively solved and has been simmering since WW2, and that is the Hungarian one. Because after WW2 Hungary got forced a status quo in borders and beyond a smaller population exchange with Czechs the diaspora Hungarian population got offered no solution (good or bad), be it autonomy or deporting them into Hungary. At the same time after 1945 in Hungary in the name on international solidarity the status of these people became a taboo.

>It's an interesting topic why it came to be like this. For one Hungary had almost no leverage in peace talks, but it was just enough to make the allies block anyone trying to deport Hungarians like Germany, plus Hungarians didn't commit (serious) war crimes against Romanians, Slovaks etc so there was no crime to pay for really. also the fact that all affected states fell into Soviet sphere and Stalins insistence on status quo was came to play.

>Anyway ffw to the 1980s. The system is slowly crumbling in Hungary allowing opposition voices to surface, meanwhile Romania under Ceaucescu begins its nationailst programmes that would lead to quick assimilation of Hungarians there. This is where contemporary Hungarian nationalism starts, because the international character of Hungarian communism means its opposition is at least partially nationalist in character. Then after '90 the lid comes off entirely and these bordering countries like Slovakia which thought the matter was long resolved suddenly feel irritated and suprised that Hungarians still haven't forgot it.

>While Hungarian politicians in general tried to maintain constructive relationships, like the majority of the population many politicans agree(d) that there is more linking Hungary to these Hungarians than just language, which is naturally under suspect by the neighbour countries and is often perceived as revisionism.

>The conflict here is in how Hungary and her neighbours views this question. The other countries think their minority laws and policies and sufficient, but for Hungarians this is not enough. Historians here say the whole Trianon question is still unprocessed by the nation despite the time gone by, because there was never a real closure on it, it was either full-blown revisionism in the interwar, silenced during communism and a pit of muddled half-assed steps since '90. Currently Orbán's answer is economic and cultural-spritiual unification.

>IMHO there should have been minor border revisions after WW2 and a set of bilateral treaties, akin to those between Italy and Austria regarding Südtyrol. Border changes are out of question now - I think if our military was in better shape we should intervened in Yugoslavia on side of Croats (but it very, very much wasn't), and I give like 0,5% chance of getting the Hungarian majority strip from Ukraine - and more realistically we should have ratified bilateral agreements with Romania and Slovakia regarding minorities during EU ascension talks.

>And so because there is still conflict, nationalism finds its breeding ground.

https://www.space.com/28611-star-flew-through-solar-system.html

2 stars passed through our Oort Cloud 100,000 AU away 70,000 Years Ago. Artist rendetion

>>43444
Not new news and this picture is bullshit. It was just a bit brighter than regular star on sky, nothing more. You can't see some red ball in sky.

>>43438
Thank you for this post Ernst, very informative. Best of luck to Belarusians in these trying times.

>>43443
>>43437
>>43436
All of the incessant noise these terrible apes make and I just want a Mars colony and some cool telescopes and space probes with an interstellar voyage eventually
>>43444

>>43448
To some people basic human rights might seem like a more pressing issue than space exploration. Reminds me of this:

>"the whole world know that the soviet people have only cosmic achievements and that they have nothing in shops" t. girl in thumbnail, from a cops episode shot in the USSR in 1990.

https://youtu.be/wneN16HIoVI

This is worrying
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/19/health/teen-death-coronavirus-wellness-partner/index.html
Does anybody know how to go about getting one of those antigen tests? I want to know if I've been pozzed without knowing it. Anyway I like how they put "healthy" in quotation marks since he was fat and diabetic but still none of that is what's worrying me.

What does worry me is twofold, which is that firstly the pestilence is an unknown in terms of late life flare ups and causing AIDS, herpes, or chickenpox like problems late in life. Secondly, and this is my much graver concern, is the fact that it is clearly affecting the brain. As someone who's already gotten diseased in the brain within the last several years I would very much like to avoid having to go through with anything like that again particularly when I don't know if that will have set me up for some kind of vulnerability to more severe CNS infection from this.

It's a lot of unknowns and the situation is very clearly not even remotely being handled right now. At least Arnold Schwarzenegger is openly calling people morons for doing stupid shit like not wearing masks in closed environments and airlines are kicking people off flights. Seriously what kind of a complete dipshit asshole do you have to be to board an airline and refuse to wear a mask? Although then again I suppose that could be your fault for still trying to deal with airlines right now to begin with. It's a damn shame because I wouldn't mind traveling this summer but like hell am I gonna pack myself on a bus or plane right now.

Eh, discord now to. Thing is, I can't close this bar and it's annoying.
No, I don't want fucking read this. My life not matter at all, I live in shithole and don't have any supremacy, quite opposite. I don't give a shit about first world problems and I not care not about US of A polisi or US of A bydlo maradeurs or teenagers with some kid-tier utopia anarchist political bullshit. Local "police" can shoot me in my house right now and nobody will care or protect me from that. And I doubt Discord or Facebook or any other shitty company can summon GDI soldiers in Russia and liberate it or something.

>>43459
How many Russians get shot by cops every year? I cannot find any numbers or indication for how much or even whether this happens on English noosphere.

>>43460
well recently some guy was shoot for stealing 4 rolls of wallpaper.
But msot times it's not shoot - just beaten to death, beaten to death and raped during "interrogation", raped and beaten to death in prison etc.

>>43451

> affecting the brain

From what it looks like in the article it is related to oxygen levels and shit. The brain does not like low oxygen levels and the decease affects the lungs, you know the primary source of oxygen.

>>43459
Such is life under American Kulturimperialismus.

>>43461
Yeah, the prison thing is what I notice most about Russian 'justice'. I mostly read RFE so a lot of that stuff shows up, and a lot of the time, the coppers there seem to leave it to the priosns to disappear people into the system. Have prisoners break their legs, and then refuse them medical treatment behind closed doors and things of that nature.

>>43451
It affects the brain insofar as it can temporarily eliminate smelling and tasting. Most other damage is collateral from the cytokine storms the body creates as a reaction.
And being stuck on a ventillator for longer periods of time.

Afaik it doesn’t reproduce in the brain, so it’s not a proper brain-disease.
(Though it’s still worrying and the neurological symptoms are the single biggest reason why I don’t want to contract it at all.)

>>43479
From what I've read it's thought to also cause breathing problems by infecting or damaging the part of the brain responsible for controlling automatic functions hence part of the sudden heart failure or respiratory arrest
https://www.theweek.in/news/health/2020/06/19/Coronavirus-may-infect-respiratory-centre-of-brain-suggests-research.html
Honestly the sheer variety of tissue types it seems capable of invading and damaging is worrisome. There's also the fact that people 60 days later are still sick and purportedly some of them are having flare ups after 90 days.

I really wish the media would actually investigate and show sick people more. Part of the reason people think it's not real is because for whatever reason and I don't just think it's HIPPA laws they're not showing all the hospitalized people or mass graves. It's a reporting problem and I suspect it has something to do with "not causing panic" and "muh stocks muh economy" which is why Pence not doctors were basically put in charge but idk why journalists aren't letting a lot be seen either. That includes the "recovered" in some cases being disabled.

Infamous Schemahegumen Sergiy (One that was in USSR first in Militia shcool, then 17 years in prison for murder, robbery, dangerous driving that killed person etc etc, then become priest and very famous one - who was very close to and twisted some famous persons like former Crimea prosecutor Natalya Poklonskaya into fanatic belivers) after his speech commentary when Patriarch decided to close temples when pandemic started, where he called all and russian goverment and Russian Ortodox Church leaders "Coward Jews ("Jew" in rude way) who should be immideatly removed towards Jew region and that nobody should be block for russian people in their path to temples. He also casted curse on them" he was removed from public speeches by church leaders and goverment "found extremism" in what he publically told (in case anybody interested his full speech https://youtu.be/2C6WEDuUiJA )

Well, now he barricaeded himself and his followers in one of Ural monasteries and have some Coassacs protection and now prepearing for Rosguard soldiers assault. He also have some forest churches with his fanatic belivers, he also against vaccination and belives that they will insert "tracking chips" in people which will leed to "fashist regime". Also, he is fan of Stalin.

>>43484
I thought he seized two monasteries? He laid siege to the women's one until they left and then took control of the men's one too? Or are they just different buildings on the same site?

Also, don't they consider Nicholas II a Martyr too?

>>43484
How crazy is that compared to the state sponsored crazy? Didn't Putin just open a large cathedral (don't know the name for orthodox ones) recently with a mosaic of Stalin? The armed forces church or something. Although he did decline having his portray in mosaic saying it was to early or something like that.

>>43486
There was going to be a Stalin and a Putin mural in the new cathedral of the armed forces but after it was mocked in runet, they scrapped the plan.

>>43485
Nicky not just a saint but also a passion bearer

The more I think about it, the more I'm in favor of what Australia's doing. Education in the humanities and social sciences at Western universities is almost completely degraded these days. They are more likely to destroy critical thinking ability than generate it, judging by the hordes of woke idiots that come out of them.

What they should for all non-STEM subjects do is offer full-ride tuition awards to people who agree to work as teachers for a certain number of years after graduation, as well as to the top few % of applicants with an expressed interest in a subject (who will be expected to go on into academia). We need more teachers (at least in the US), and way fewer PhDs competing for a limited pool of tenure track jobs. To an extent, the latter problem can also be solved by mandating more humanities courses at uni, opening up more professor jobs.

I've heard of at least one university that requires a minor in the humanities if you're in STEM, and vice versa, and I think that should be standard practice at every university. STEMbots need to be able to think like people, and hippy dippy liberal arts students need to learn how to think scientifically. Short of semi-fascist nationalist BS like requiring patriotic loyalty oaths to not undermine American values, I think the only way to de-wokify the academy is to raise the intellectual bar for professorship, and force all humanities/social science students to gain serious knowledge in fields that are more grounded in hard facts.

And of course, remove students who bring woke BS into their STEM classes. Failing and eventually expelling anyone who refuses to accept things like the biological differences between men and women would be a good, organic way to remove the worst idiots from going on to positions of influence as professors, teachers, journalists, or government bureaucrats.

I don't think any of this has any hope of being implemented in countries that have already gone insane, but I can dream

>>43502
STEM already have enough "soft skill" bullshit, if anything it should be the other way round and have them take writing classes and especially more statistics because most of our student write like absolute retards and try to calculate standard deviations with two replicates because Excel will do that.

>>43502
So why punish people for wanting to study something and further their education? Why not just lower the price on the ones you want to incentivise? It's entirely political. It's just a continuation of their failed attempt to deregulate prices a few years back by attacking a field that is an easy target because of tards who think that there is no academic rigour outside of STEM.

>>43487
I suspect these would be funny to see

>>43502
>>43505

I was going to write a reply but I just couldn't be arsed. So instead I will point out to you that the oldest subject in university is philosophy and many universities today (in Europe at least) where founded by at least connection to the church. One of the oldest soft skill bullshit creator there is.

>>43505

>It's entirely political.

Exactly. All education policy is social engineering, whether you have it as an explicit goal or not. The laissez-faire approach to education where anyone can pick any path of study they want has - in my opinion - proven to be a miserable failure. Among its fruits is the wave of tyrannical SJW groupthink sweeping America's elite at the moment.

>>43507
What connection and/or causal relation do you want to point out?
Platos Akadḗmeia has been there before church as soft skill bullshit generator I guess.

The premise of

>all humanities, social science and psychology is sophistry

is what is behind the aversion I guess.

Then what else explains social behavior, social relations, norms, culture, the human etc? It's STEM as scientism, the believe in scientific reductionism and ofc lastly a priority for instrumentality/instrumentalism. Which is beyond political issues often enough, because Hightech (Information and communication technology, biotechnology and other technology that needs highly educated engineers) is seen as important economic field, the base for economic wealth. Nobody would bet on the agrarian sector or classic industrialism, that is for third world shitholes and threshold countries.
It's funny nobody will bully the majors that produces people going into finance e.g.
Humanities and social science don't produce profits or useful results is the sentiment. The problem lies in the definition of useful, how is that meassured. In value revenue? In technlogical progress? Is this the only progress we want or even know?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/24/we-live-in-a-cage-residents-hide-as-macaque-gangs-take-over-thai-city

>>43515
Honestly as pointed out earlier

>perceived economic value

Bingo. Like people will try and say film students are useless to the country as is acting etc to be fair film actors really are kinda fucking useless; there's a reason the profession was disreputable during Shakespeare's time until you point out the many billions of dollars a year industry it is and then most people will say oh well it must be important then. Economics as a whole is actually an utterly shit indicator of how truly useful a thing is.

To go one further I'd say it's really coming down to perceptions. Like for example what, precisely, is the value of astronomy in the modern age? You could easily argue that this is a useless STEM field, the technical equivalent of a philosophy degree, and whose economic utility is negligible if existent at all. Meanwhile a career path in say film making is, in it's own right, a highly technical field.

So a lot of this really comes down to perception and I think that it's also wildly telling that no one brings up dime a dozen business grads, who are quite literally the equivalent of neoliberal apparatchiki.

>During a company-wide meeting this month at Moscow-region state-run television station Yegoryevsk Today, the chief editor issued a directive. Staffers were to de-register from the polling stations where they usually vote and re-register at the one in the town of Yegoryevsk.

>“There you can do what you wish, but tomorrow you need to be on my list,” a woman who is purportedly the editor can be heard telling her staff — some of whom grumble audibly — in a recording sent to the independent election monitoring organization Golos, or Voice. “There may be various consequences, I’m just warning you. Especially during a pandemic: no bonus, no job.”
>“We all live under this government and sometimes we have to step on our own throats,” she adds.

According to the only election watchdog active in Russia that is independent of the Russian government, this vote will the least transparent since 1991. This referendum in on changes to the Russian Constitution among which the most important one is a clause to allow for Putin to "reset" his mandate count. This vote was originally scheduled for April 22nd and then delayed to July 1st. They only began voting today (which will extend to July 1st), all while the yellow cough is exposing serious problems with the present state of affairs in the Russian government.

Unlike his western counterparts, Putin has had his approval rating plummet during the this pandemic. Anxiety caused by the looming economic crisis and a view that the government has completely Russians are the primary culprits for this lack of support from the public (even while Russia had plenty of time to prepare for it even sending respirators to ameriga :DD). While mismanagement by the Kremlin has exacerbated the harm caused by Putin's decentralization of this crisis into a discoordinated effort by regional administrations in a futile attempt to being seen as the face of this crisis.

>“We’ve never had this many complaints from people telling us they are being pressured to vote,” Melkonyants said, referring to a common practice ahead of elections in Russia, which is nonetheless forbidden by law.
>A high turnout would improve the already high chances of the constitutional overhaul passing, analysts say. According to pre-referendum polling by the state-run VtSIOM pollster, between 67 and 71% of Russians support the amendments.
>In stark opposition to Melkonyats, head of the Central Election Commission Ella Pamfilova told the state-run Rossiya 24 television channel this week that the commission has “never had this few complaints” ahead of a vote.

>“Mask-wearing and social-distancing guidelines means observers won’t be able to verify a voter’s identity,” Melkonyants said.
>Then there is the fact that ballots will be kept at polling stations overnight.
>Moreover, the Central Election Commission will not be requiring video recording at each polling station that observers can later check for possible fraud. Nor will it be publishing voter data for specific polling stations.

It is worth noting that while United Russia is running a campaign for it, part of which being the russia strong parade in an attempt to boost patriotic sentiment before rewriting their social contract in a brand new constitutional overhaul including an amendment opening way for Russia to be stripped of its pretense of a democratic state.

>Notably, ahead of the vote, the authorities have focused on advertising all amendments but that one.

Can't wait to see the coming days :DD

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/06/25/as-russias-constitution-reform-vote-kicks-off-election-watchdog-decries-manipulative-process-a70695

>>43647

>Unlike his western counterparts, Putin has had his approval rating plummet during the this pandemic

I don't know which Western counterparts is meant but Trump's down to like 36% from this.

>>43655
I think CapPutino's approval rating was still in the 60s if I remember correctly (An all time low, but still in the 60s), though that's probably not an accurate measurement of the political state of Russia.
Does it matter though? It's not a democracy.
Hybrid systems are a curse because they aren't honest. I want at least this grain of honesty from my rulers. Tell me you're oppressing me outright.

>>43647
This voiting is a total joke even for low russian standarts. There some other constitution changes but they mostly random shit that they change every day and nobody seriously cares, but important part is that Russia basicly don't have Constitution now and transitional period towards full-authoritaric country finnaly ended. We are not even "pretend" democratic anymore. From population most people don't care as I look at it.

>>43659
I feel bad for Russians. You guys are basically getting all the shitty parts of the USSR at this point with none of the decent things like a guaranteed job or home why a bunch of churkajew oligarchs siphon all the wealth out of the Russian people and send their kids to live in London. Is there any point at which said oligarchs will push it too far and be threatened with Oktober Revolution 2 electric boogaloo?

>>43661
Any goverment change will place same tier goverment with same goals. Currently even people who don't like putin, even from young people have views now like "west in decline, we need strnok leader" - ideas that never changed in russia for centuaries and place similar authoritaric leaders untill they shit country to point it in big crisis again. I think best future for this country will be division into smaller states. And while some will repeat same mistakes and be same tier countries (look at belorussia goverment), other parts may still hope change somethnig, in one way or another.
But I don't feel like anything will happen anytime soon. I feel we currently in middle of current regime. And at least untill 2024 I don't predict anything major unless world itself started dramatic changes.

>>43663
Of what kind are those younger people?
Do Russion emigrate? I imagine it to be dependent on the level of education and place.
Why do you think people think of strong leadership? I read Dugin and it seemed something like a hertiage thing: slavism and (former?) super power, russia does not want to lose its place as geopolitical power.

>>43673
I'd advise against taking Dugin seriously. He's kinda like a Guenon mixed with Evola, but 100% more clown. And his influence on the public opinion is pretty much zero, just like the 99% of other philosophers' influence, tbh.

>>43673
If any of the four great powers--Russia, China, America, EU--starts to balkanize in earnest it will be the end of their status as a great power. Moreover it would spell their doom as a place relatively free of external meddling and the pieces will be picked apart by the other powers like vultures.

I don't like it but that's just the way that it is, which is all pretty much just basic game theory. I'd like it better if we could maintain ourselves as all separate smaller powers without having to put up with the assholes in Brussels/Beijing/Moscow/Washington nor having to put up with all the sometimes even worse complete assholes in the rest of our countries but we do not exist as independent city states for a reason, and if your enemies are cheering you on it generally does not bode well for you.

The caveat is that imperial situations are actually typically worse for the average citizen. Really in order to be an imperial power what that pretty much boils down to is a more massive concentration of power at the top and favors for their friends with certain material advantages to the smaller wealthier elite and the better off citizens, but at the massive expense of everybody else with the sole justification ultimately being "well yes your situation is shit but at least PROUD and GLORY feels for muh empire and you're not as exploited as foreign nationals."

Of course I really do not know what fully would happen to the rest of us if our central regime collapsed and we balkanized, minus the horrific amounts of violence and suffering in the process of breaking apart. I do not wish that on anybodyexcept the Chinese. Every day I struggle not to disrespect this establishment and shit up the place with a racist tirade against them.I'm presently having to deal with these fucking Chinese filth because something I bought at Walmart allegedly made by a "Blackrock inc." sounding company was in fact a chink one shipping it in from China and after paying extra to get it earlier it's been an entire month and the fucking chi-chinaman is actually asking me if I want it reshipped because "it got lost by logistics." Like what the FUCK either ship me my fucking thing and refund me the added earlier shipping fee or give me back all my goddamn money. The only reason I've not put more effort in is because I'm too rundown and tired to bother with anything but waiting in the mail. I cannot even imagine what hellscape this world will be when I am forced to deal with these snake eyed shifty dishonest incompetent people on a daily and institutional basis.

So in summation
>>43663
No Russia I do not believe balkanization is the solution to your problems. I think that if you want to bring up B-E-L-A-R-U-S and Ukrainyi it's only a better indication as to why exactly that is such a horrifically bad idea.

I do not mean to presume that the suffering and humiliation of the 90s is simply from balkanization and collapse of the USSR but that is indeed a part of it. All you'll end up with is dozens of petty tyrants and becoming evening poorer without any ability to repulse foreigners.

I just think it's sad that apparently the only Russian response seems to be le stronk leader or breaking apart. Why insist on a leader who treats his own people like shit?

>>43675

>He's kinda like a Guenon mixed with Evola, but 100% more clow

I greatly resent you comparing Guénon to that Russian clown.

Dugin unironically thinks a Russian man's power is in his beard and they lost the Chechen wars because they don't do circle dancing anymore. His grand Fourth Political Theory is just lifting idea from Alain de Benoist before demanding his audience fill in the blanks. His Atlanticist theory is also nothing groundbreaking. It's a good thing Dugin irrelevant outside the few kooks on the fringe right who discover him because his ideas are both derivative and dumb as well as painfully predictable at this point.

Today I got a letter from the government, which is a part of the new national consultation campaign, and I wanted to write about it a bit.

What is, a national consultation?
Simple. Every one or two years, the Orbán-government sends out a questionnaire regarding a "hotly debated" issue (immigration, holding a referendum, Soros and so on) to every citizen of age, and they expect you to send back this form so that they can take the will of the people into consideration while making policy.
Basically it's just a tool that legitimises whatever policy the government wants to take while simultaneously polling for disagreement among the population.

Usually the form is accompanied by a letter from Orbán, giving you a briefing on the issue and telling you how important it is that we, Hungarians stand together.

The problem is that the questions are worded in such a way, that the yes or the no answer you can give doesn't feel objective at all. Basically they only want you to legitimize a pre-made policy through manipulation.

This time it's about the 'rona, how we should handle a potential second-wave, and the economic consequences of the pandemic. Definitely a thing that should be asked to the man on the street.
The slogan of the campaign is "Your country. Your voice."

Whenever I get a questionnaire like this, I get a very perverted enjoyment out of it while reading.
I wanted to take it upon myself to translate some of the questions, but apparently they published it in English too. What a joy.
http://abouthungary.hu/news-in-brief/heres-the-latest-national-consultation-questionnaire-in-english/

I especially like question 5.

>Do you agree that, during an epidemic, internet access should be free for teachers and families with school children?

Question 7.

>Do you think that, during the defense against an epidemic, banks and multinational companies should also contribute to the cost of the defense?

And question 11.

>What do you think? Should Hungary protect Hungarian companies against hostile foreign acquisition?

Also love how in question 1, (what measures to take in case of a second wave) "free parking" is an option :D

The only remarkable part of Orbán's letter is the first paragraph, which reads as follows:

>In the last few months the global pandemic made us face never before seen challenges. The virus infected millions and destroyed hundreds of thousands worldwide. Reports from abroad of untreated patients and mass graves came one after the other.

The fact that he used the word "destroyed" is fucking absurd. Such an amusing oddity. These are the bits that make reading things like this almost worthwhile. The unique language of propaganda. And it's fresh, not like those ancient pieces of agitprop. There's still meat on these bones, you don't have to suck the marrow out to feel satisfied. If you get what I mean.

>>43675
His Forth Political Theory got translated into German. His influence in Europe is not zero, I read on a russua friendly (so I heard) news page that Dugin is not what he is said to be in the West. What Dugin is doing, might be fruitless if you look for a 1:1 conversion. Yet is essentialist ethnopluralist ideas the sacral, mythic and heideggerian thrust did not become evident for me in its function or meaning are prevalent in the european New Right as well.
You underestimate the power of ideas, they don't travel on the surface but seep into the earth of history to become its groundwater ready to be pumped up in different forms and modifications. Knowledge does not travel without modifcations by actors that act like a medium. Given that nearly all abstract ideas of political (or other) scope have been shaped by philosophers, and many contemporaries come back to them. You just don't see where they come from, that is why you think the don't have any influence.

Anyway, Dugin put up the question of empire and superpower and I wonder how these ideas are still virulent in Russia today, this means that not all Russians will think like that, but perhaps you have certain types that do. So if Dugin is right or not in this point is what is of interest, he might be a clown otherwise.

>>43679
I can guarantee you that Dugin's ideas are neither influential nor original, and the Murrican higher in the threda seems to agree with that.

As for the other philosophers' influence, consider all those losers majoring in philosophy worldwide (and also all those who majored in philosophy in the last several centuries). Now count how many philosophers actually contributed something worthwhile in all the humanity's history (I'm guessing you'll get a hundred or two tops, probably even less). Compare the two numbers and you'll see that my estimation isn't really far from truth.

>>43673
As was said, Dugin is one of this pseudo-historian "patriotic" clonws, some of which many even belive in thigs like "hyperborea before atlantida" so don't take it serious.

>Do Russion emigrate?

Of cource, who can. I can only deam about escaping this hole.

>Of what kind are those younger people?

Younger generations often had some more belive in some liberal things, west, democracy but it's no more than periodic fashion. After time they get back to same slave and hate mentality russian society driven by.

>>43679

>Dugin put up the question of empire and superpower and I wonder how these ideas are still virulent in Russia today

These two aren't really related. Dugin has his roots elsewhere and is closer to a political outsider that was rehabilitated by the regime when he began being used as a regime approved rallying figure for Russian far right groups.
The political themes that were dug up and inculcated in the Russian people have more to do with the monopolization of media and how this Kremlin controlled media is entirely staffed by loyal cronies who will sacrifice every last shred of dignity to ensure they can thrive in the absolute swamp that Russian media is. Such is life when the ruling regime is free to assassinate journalists and whistle blowers.

>>43655
I didn't think of Trump as I wrote that, for some reason. I should have said European.
Europeans leaders had their approval rating jump at the start of the corona virus crisis, something that did not happen when Russia's corona virus reached led to quarantines being declared.
https://www.euronews.com/2020/05/21/coronavirus-why-did-european-leaders-approval-ratings-rise-during-lockdown

>>43682
I don't consider everbody majoring in philosophy a philosopher. You did not understand what I meant by knowledge traveling and reaching out. Lets explicate: Interestingly these people majoring read philosophers and accumulate knowledge whose sedimentation might make an influence. They will talk to other people.
There aren't so many philosophers known, certainly more than 200 that are having or had influence. People in academia writing for newspapers, sitting in expert comissions etc. Certainly more than 200 that have read philosophers and will likely work with theses ideas. Not at any given moment but that is not necessary anyway. The unsconscious knowledge is feed by ideas and though one does not refer to Hobbes, Decartes, Schmitt, Plato, Singer, Butler, Rousseau, Kant, Mill, Bentham, Arendt, Adorno, Sellars etc. he or she might take a position that is (close to) his. These rather known figures which also get read in other humanities and social science get mutliplied and refered to by thousands of others, academics that write books, that will be read by some couple of thousands more all over the world, these people will also have conversations and exhcange with people not being acquainted with philosophers but they still get in contact with the ideas, via traveling knowledge, certainly knowledhe that is "diluted" or quite modified. If you talk about what the human is, what the social is, what one should do, you certainly do not grab your knowledge out of the air or by personal genius but most certainly by the sediments of centuries and the knowledge traveling and circulating in it while getting modified, abandoned and rediscovered/reactivated.
Dugin might be on the fringe and a clown. Yet some Germans found it necessary to translate him, I mean he was quicklier translated then some better known french works. And I stated explicitly that Dugin calls up on russia being a superpower and slavism, so he might take ideas from somewhere else, but how prevalent are they in todays Russia, given that we have a le stronk leader demand going on.

Also note that I'm not a Dugin fan, I just was interested in political postions and anthropolical/philosophical/historical thoughts circulating in the New Right.

Anyone else watching Kosovo? The national meltdown from the butthurt of The Hague indicting el presidente because it's still a war crime, even if they won. Kind of ebin tbh.

Also, speaking of Russia, this made my morning
https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-baffles-german-historians-with-request-they-supplement-lectures-with-an-article-by-putin/30690752.html

>>43697

>In written comments to RFE/RL, Russian Embassy Berlin spokesman Ilya Rozhkov defended the e-mail and said it was "of a purely informational character aimed at helping readers develop an objective view of the material."
> The aim, it said, was to ensure that people make their own conclusions about the article, "and don't rely on foreign assessments."

Incredible, sage because I don't really have anything to contribute other than commenting on how absurd and comedic this entire event is.

>>43699
My favourite bit is:

>Putin's article, titled The Real Lessons Of The 75th Anniversary Of World War II, has been subject to major controversy since its publication in U.S. journal The National Interest on June 18. It cites archival documents but is riddled with grammar mistakes and odd phrasing. The Kremlin has denied accusations by a Russian historian that a quote attributed to Hitler is a fabrication.

>The U.K. faces another economic shock at the end of this year when a post-Brexit transition period ends, casting the country out of the 27-nation bloc’s vast single market.

https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/boris-johnson-covid-19-disaster-britain-71515876
I hadn't even thought of that. So just how much is Brexit going to compound how royally fucked the British economy is going to be?

>>43839
It is going to be fine. They just bend over for Uncle Sam and get chlorinated chicken to eat. Also unrest in Northern Ireland.

>>43846
Yeah but I mean seriously though, if the UK is already in shambles economically from the virus won't Brexit being finalized put them at risk of going over the edge into a full blown depression? Don't expect a whole lot of help from us right now.

>>43849
Who knows? I bet the only ones who are happy right now is the ones that believe that if they only wave the Union Jack and sing Rule Britannia the world will bend to their will. Sadly for them they are also the ones who voted brexit and then bought a house in Spain.

>>43855
For what it's worth, I am rooting for you guys in the EU. How's the general situation with the virus where you are? How well prepared is the EU for developing a CENTCOM and how are you guys doing against the proofstering?

>>43862
Basically everyone is laughing at Sweden for not locking down and getting about 5000 killed. Meanwhile other countries are celebrating how good they are for locking everyone up and saving so many lives and if someone complains they point at Sweden. Meanwhile most people here doesn't care, well we wash our hands and keep our distance but the why should the rest of the country suffer because some politicians built a very expensive hospital they had trouble staffing. Foreign media are more obsessed with it then we.

But in all it is going away as much as it can go away.

EU will never get a CENTCOM because covid 19 has made everyone a nationalist so in a few years EU will be killed off. France is about to get Le Pen for president, Italy isn't liking that nobody want to pays their denbts. Poland and Hungary are becoming mini Russia and the rest of the countries are having proofster problems them selves. I hate it but that is the future since single minded people, without a vision that involves taking a huge step backwards and make it like it used to be because back then everything was good, are setting the agenda.

>>43862

>thinking either one is the good guy

One side are local elites and the other are the EU's elites. The optimal option is to tear down the EU as it exists and renegotiate the whole damn thing because as it stands, it's functioning almost as an empire building project for the major European powers at the expense of smaller ones who must join or be choked out. Then once you are in, it becomes a race to the bottom to get companies to set up shop in your cities to take advantage of lax local taxation/wages and economic zone. The only winners are the rich slobs.

There are issues with brexit but the EU is not a saintly body worth rooting for neither.

>>43866
The biggest problem is that you believed you own lies and now the rich snobs are getting citizenship in EU countries to protect their summerhouses and the rest gets chlorinated chicken. There were options of renegotiating your membership but no, you just had to leave because those continentals cannot be trusted and we won WW2 so piss of you frogs and krauts.

The EU isn't perfect, but you left for imaginary reasons.

>>43867
Not pommy, don't support brexit. Just don't think that there is a good guy in the situation. Poms got the will pulled on them by their elites, and the EU people got told how nasty and evil all Brits were by their elites.

And I didn't say renegotiate their position. I believe that what the EU needs is a complete restructuring to adapt into something beyond the economic treaty if true federal statehood is what they want to do, and from what I've seen over the past years, statehood is something that they would like to transition towards. Recreate the thing from a more robust foundation instead of trying to wrestle a currency and market treaty into a pseudo empire colonising Eastern Europe.

We maybe getting an invasion: Reddit bans r/The_Donald and r/ChapoTrapHouse as part of a major expansion of its rules
https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/29/21304947/reddit-ban-subreddits-the-donald-chapo-trap-house-new-content-policy-rules

>Reddit [has banned] r/The_Donald, r/ChapoTrapHouse, and about 2,000 other communities today after updating its content policy to more explicitly ban hate speech. The policy update comes three weeks after Black Lives Matter protests led several popular Reddit forums to go dark temporarily in protest of what they called the company’s lax policies around hosting and promoting racist content. It marks a major reversal for a company whose commitment to free expression has historically been so strong that it once allowed users to distribute stolen nude photos freely on the site.

>“I have to admit that I’ve struggled with balancing my values as an American, and around free speech and free expression, with my values and the company’s values around common human decency,” Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said in a call with reporters.

>In a blog post that cites the company’s new rules, Huffman said users of the r/The_Donald subreddit had violated the site’s policies for years. (The site has no official connection to President Donald Trump, although he did do an Ask Me Anything there as a candidate in 2016.) “The community has consistently hosted and upvoted more rule-breaking content than average (Rule 1), antagonized us and other communities (Rules 2 and 8), and its mods have refused to meet our most basic expectations,” Huffman said.

>Similarly, r/ChapoTrapHouse had also hosted content that violates the site’s rules, Huffman said. The subreddit is a spinoff of the popular left-wing podcast.

>Reddit’s new policy begins with a first rule that requires users to “consider the human.” It reads:
>Remember the human. Reddit is a place for creating community and belonging, not for attacking marginalized or vulnerable groups of people. Everyone has a right to use Reddit free of harassment, bullying, and threats of violence. Communities and people that incite violence or that promote hate based on identity or vulnerability will be banned.
>That formed the basis of a policy framework that bans hate speech.

>“Reddit’s mission is to bring community and belonging to everybody in the world, and there is speech in the world and on Reddit that prevents other people from doing so,” Huffman told reporters. “Harassing speech or hateful speech prevents people from coming to Reddit and feeling safe and sharing their vulnerabilities ... So if we have speech on Reddit that’s preventing people from using Reddit the way that we intend it to be used, or that prevents us from achieving our mission, then it’s actually a very easy decision.”

>The introduction of the new policies has resulted in the removal of about 2,000 subreddits so far, and the company says “the vast majority” were inactive. Only about 200 of them had more than 10 daily users, the company said. They include:

>r/DarkHumorAndMemes
>r/ConsumeProduct
>r/DarkJokeCentral
>r/GenderCritical
>r/Cumtown
>r/imgoingtohellforthis2
>r/Wojak
>r/soyboys

>Last year, Reddit “quarantined” r/The_Donald, placing it behind a warning screen after it was found to host content that incited violence. The company had previously prevented posts on the forum from reaching Reddit’s front page. Former users of the forum began moving to a new site off Reddit last year.

>While Monday’s removals hit some high-profile political communities, Huffman said the company would continue to support a broad range of political speech.

>“Political speech continues to be safe,” Huffman said. “But all communities, including our political communities, have to abide by our policies. And while we will do everything we can to help bring them in line, if they fail in doing so they are not allowed on Reddit.”

>While r/The_Donald has no official connection to Trump, Reddit’s move could draw the ire of the president. Trump’s campaign complained after Snap removed him from promotion in Snapchat’s Discover tab earlier this month, and after Twitter began placing warnings on some of the president’s tweets.

>At the same time, the company has been under more pressure to remove hate speech. Among the critics has been former Reddit CEO Ellen Pao, who earlier this month said r/The_Donald should have been removed long ago. “You should have shut down the_donald instead of amplifying it and its hate, racism, and violence,” she said in a tweet directed at Huffman. “So much of what is happening now lies at your feet. You don’t get to say BLM when Reddit nurtures and monetizes white supremacy and hate all day long.”

>>43876

>We maybe getting an invasion

This board is rather unknown, so they'll flock to 4chan, Twitter and the like. Or maybe someone will make a popular reddit. clone, kinda like 8chan to 4chan.

>>43880
It would be interesting to know how many of them are also libertarian orientated and will cry that the mainstream is oppressing their freedom of speech while, jokes on them, it's a private enterprise and can do tf they want with their platform and its content.
I guess many have been cross posting anyway.

Okay so can anyone figure out exactly what they mean about distribution and central banks and why in the fucking hell a partial economic shutdown would cause us to lose all our coins?
https://www.wfmz.com/news/area/lehighvalley/national-coin-shortage-a-bit-annoying-for-local-business/article_528e80e4-bcb1-11ea-a28c-bb75a987f11a.html
I found out today that all the local area stores havent got much change to give especially quarters because something about how none of the local banks have any quarters.

While some people might feel excited to live in interesting times because they have nothing going for them I am starting to find this all incredibly depressing. Like what the absolute fucking hell is this shit? How could we possibly have all started running out of coins? Is there some kind of a distribution system I am unaware of operating on a daily basis that like takes all the coins into some bank vault over the weekend and then redistributes them to local businesses? But all the banks had been open this whole time.

Quite frankly I find this whole thing rather suspicious. Being told that we ran out of coins and that the banks don't have any coins to give us is quite possibly the most third world I have ever felt throughout this entire ordeal. It's just such a basic fundamental part of running an actual non-failed country that I was taken aback by it.

America doesn't have any coins in our banks right now which means local businesses don't have change to give us either. This means that I literally cannot do any laundry this week because I've only got a few quarters left. I cannot do laundry right now because my country ran out of coins.

A part of me almost wonders if this regarding quarters in particular has to do with our political-oligarch caste getting especially butthurt about pic related and recalling them all though, which in it's own right would be an incredibly retarded and third world response which has made me realize today that I think I need to invest in a full roll of bat quarters. They might be valuable someday.This is not a joke. That was the design for our quarters as chosen last year or 2018 for the 2020 edition of quarters based on a state national park's fruit bats.

>>43876
Afaik Thedonald was already kinda dead because the centrally assigned admins basically soft-blocked all the posting.
They already had a bunker prepared in case the reddit went down, so no site will get flooded.

No idea why they banned Chapotraphouse. (They left boards like Moretankiechapo, Genzedong and FULLCOMMUNISM up, so it wasn’t to combat left-wing extremism. Probably just a measure to look impartial)

The only board I’m kind of sad about is r/consumeproduct, but that got reestablished on a different website too, so it’s not a big deal.
The only thing reddit managed to do with this is lose controll over these communities completely, so if r/the_donald does anything ever again online or IRL, there will be no reddit-admin to strong-arm the community to make them stand in line.
Basically it’s like when an 8 year old is left alone and the first thing they do is have ketchcup and ice cream for breakfast, lunch and dinner to “show the adults”.

>>43938
I don't really know what chapotraphouse is but I'd imagine they probably with current events went overboard with the "only good cop is a dead cop" stuff which I'm not entirely unsympathetic towards a general attitude of them flagrantly violating the NAP as a matter of course and mark my words if the cops don't get reigned in sooner or later we're going to have a lot more Micah Johnsons and Dorners not getting cornered. I mean really these last four years have been tearing the country in half badly enough I would be surprised to find we didn't have civil war or total destabilization in the next decade.

As for >>43880 he is right although I thought 8kanker got killed years ago? Regardless Germany is entirely correct. We are totally unknown. Just about the only people that are suffering is 4kanker and considering their central role in killing KC permanently it gives me a great deal of joy to know that redditors are probably killing their shithole right this very moment. Live by the shitpost, die by the shitpost I say.

>is lose controll over these communities completely,

Nah. It's been proven throughout imageboard history that the only way to deal with an internet cancer is to cut it out or crapflood it. Just living it up as a containment feature will only allow it to grow and get worse and worse. What's probably going to happen is all the boomers on there are going to shit up data farms and psyop platforms like shitter and FB where a good number of them are liable to be promptly banned or kick up interpersonal drama losing friends and family or, at the worst, getting into real legal troubles. But the whole idea that you need to keep them there, nah. It's like kicking apart a campfire. You might get smaller fires burning all over the place elsewhere but most of them are just going to sputter out and whatever defining features they had are going to get diluted or transmuted elsewhere. I'd have to imagine that not even 4cancer would tolerate them long as some united bloc.

>and the first thing they do is have ketchcup and ice cream for breakfast, lunch and dinner to “show the adults”.

But I'm an adult and I eat ice cream for breakfast lunch and dinner. In fact I don't think I even behaved that way as a kid and generally had a better sense of leaving some for later but now that I've got the disposable income and ability to buy what I want to eat I buy as much sugary cereal and ice cream and cheese cake and donuts as I damn well please and now unlike as a kid I can just go out and buy more of them. It isn't like as a kid where whatever pizza you have on a Friday night or whatever raspberry danish on Sunday is it for the week. Actually come to think of it I just realized typing this that may have played a role in how I always try to save the best for last and mentality of rationing certain things. I kinda play vidya the same way as if I'm suddenly going to "run out" some day and finish the game and then it's finished and there's no more to enjoy the first time again.

But I'm still going to be a massive fatass and eat ice cream for dinner and lunch and breakfast. Actually wait no, you are right. There's a pandemic and I can't just get donuts whenever I want to, having more risk exposure. Luckily I already buy ice cream constantly to the extent that there's very little room in my freezer for real food like pizza and pierogies so that's unaffected.
I just wanted to show you what's what here.

>>43937

>Okay so can anyone figure out exactly what they mean about distribution and central banks and why in the fucking hell a partial economic shutdown would cause us to lose all our coins?

Federal Reserve Act says that all currency held by financial institutions such as banks comes from one of the regional banks under the Fed's control, I believe it's 12 or 15 or something of them in the US, each controlling a specific district.

The commercial banks order physical money from their Federal Reserve District and it is distributed accordingly. The commercial bank handles cash for its clients, this is you, other people and any non-bank businesses in the area. Any excess currency is returned to the Reserve where it is checked for authenticity, damage and so on, and if it passes put back into circulation, it is otherwise destroyed. Excess currency is not them giving away cash that they accumulated, but just the physical representation of currency. Currency itself is digital, and while they need enough cash on hand to repay however much they need to by law (can't remember exactly what it is) they don't need to back every single dollar they have in currency, so they get rid of that which they don't need by shipping it back.

So what coronavirus lockdown means is that your sorting facilities are going to be understaffed, your distribution network is going to be hampered, especially if it needs interstate travel and checks need to be made between states and so on. Not to mention any measures being made on the commercial end. Then you've got the same issues happening in reverse. The commercial banks are going to need to count their money and put it back into the fed which has all the same problems.

What they're talking about is not currency in circulation in the traditional sense, but rather the back of house distribution of funds that is typically taken for granted but is now being bottlenecked, and certain kinds of common currency (such as quarters) are being rationed by the Federal Reserve which means that there are fewer in open circulation (the side that most people and businesses interact with).

>>43941
I think Chapo got cut because half of the userbase were unironic Stalinists that went “libs will get the bullett too”.

Anyway, what I was trying to say is that even if I don’t agree with the bans in some cases, it’s too little too late. This cancer is terminal, just like /pol/ is.
Moot should have had the balls to cut /new/ and deal with the backlash until it died down instead of putting the tumor back. But he didn’t. Now you can’t get rid of it even if you wanted to.

In reddit’s case the tumor got cut out, but kinda late (how long has trumpism been a thing? 5 years?) and now it has legs, and ID and is walking around being its own thing.
It’s too little too late. It doesn’t feel like a relevant issue, at least to me, especially with Trump’s trainwreck of a presidency. (Or maybe I’m just not an American and I don’t know if the validity of Trumpism is still up to debate.)

>More UK retailers should ban coconut products from monkey labour: PM's fiancée

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-retail-monkey-labour/more-uk-retailers-should-ban-coconut-products-from-monkey-labour-pms-fiance-idUSKBN2440TU

I thought the PMs Mrs had made an incredibly unfortunate comment but as it turns out actual monkeys are being put to work in physical labour. What the fuck, I had no conception that this was possible.

>>43880
>>43887
>>43938
In terms of how it could effect us, I doubt it'll have much influence because we're relatively unknown and pretty low in terms of activity. However, I'm wondering if Reddit will gradually become Tumblr or ResetERA2.0

The trouble with homogenizing the internet is it allows sites like Reddit to have a de facto monopoly on the services it offers in comparison to how it was in the old days of Web1.0 where anyone could just go to another message board or start their own site with few difficulties. In today's world, pissing off a single service provider cuts you off from a very big audience. If you get banned from the major websites, then there's a ton of people you'll never reach and your online activity will likely be confined to an e-ghetto (Gab, Voat, Bitchute, et cetera) where no one will find your content.

It is my opinion that Reddit banned both /r/ChapoTrapHouse and /r/Cumtown as token gestures to appease right-wing critics who've (rightly) accused the site of targeting the online right (we're talking socially right-wing, not economically), although if you were going to ban a subreddit, those previously mentioned two would be more than qualify. /r/Cumtown was mostly an edgy humor subreddit from the left-wing perspective and edgy humor is rapidly becoming untenable on the internet. /r/ChapoTrapHouse, on the other hand, was rapidly becoming a clusterfuck of drama which I'll get to below.

Banning /r/ConsumeProduct was obviously done to keep ads running on the site. You can't have users publicly shaming people who buy your advertisers' products.

They also banned /r/GenderCritical, which surprised me, but then again, it's tough to be a TERF on the internet. Not that I have much sympathy of feminists of any stripe, trans-inclusionary or exclusionary.

>>43941

>I don't really know what chapotraphouse

Prepare yourself:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapo_Trap_House

>Chapo Trap House is an American political podcast founded in March 2016 and hosted by Will Menaker, Matt Christman, Felix Biederman, Amber A'Lee Frost, and Virgil Texas. The show is produced by Chris Wade and formerly by Brendan James. The podcast is strongly associated with the dirtbag left, a term coined by Frost to refer to a style of contentious left-wing political discourse that eschews civility for its own sake in favor of vulgarity. The show's creators published The Chapo Guide to Revolution in August 2018, with the book debuting at number 6 on The New York Times Best Seller list.

CTH focuses more on political philosophy and current events whereas Cumtown focuses on social issues, entertainment and humor. There's a small rivalry between CTH and Cumtown, which the hosts of the former accuse the latter of not being serious enough. CTH invented the insult "Irony Bro" to describe Nick Mullen, host of Cumtown. Having listened to both (can't stand CTH), I think Cumtown is much funnier. Like a left-wing version of The Dick Show.

Keep in mind there was a huge disconnect between the CTH podcast itself and the subreddit which ostensibly represents its audience. In fact, Amber A'Lee Frost has disavowed the subreddit which prompted a huge backlash between users of the subreddit supporting her and moderators of the subreddit opposing her. Eventually, moderators wholesale banned users supporting her, which prompted a schism in subreddits called /r/ChapoTrapHouse2 + 3 + 4 + et fucking cetera. As to what caused that entire feud:
https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/07/04/meet-the-anti-woke-left/

There were calls from users to "assassinate the leader of the alt-right" (whoever that maybe) and other such casual suggestions of violence against political enemies. Funny thing is, the user that previously made such a comment is still allowed to post, so even if you ban the subreddit, it's effectively useless when the users are allowed to flock to other subs and start shit there.

There was also the time when users of the subreddit targeted comedian Hannibal Burress over comments he made on Twitter about national rent control which he opposes:
https://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2019/10/hannibal-buress-disagrees-with-bernie-sanders-call-for-national-rent-control-standard

Eventually, the subreddit was quarantined a few months back before finally getting the banhammer earlier this week.

There is so much more to cover, but I hope this serves as a sufficient introduction.

>>43945
The fact this was also an election cycle didn't help.

>>43945

>Moot should have had the balls to cut /new/ and deal with the backlash until it died down instead of putting the tumor back.

Nothing personal, but people who blame /pol/ are exactly like those who used to bitch about /b/ all the time. That was never going to happen because enough of them were around to aggressively push to have things their way. Even before /new/ opened and closed, 99chan had /reich/ (/cccp/, too), so the demand for a space to discuss politics and race was there.

Polite kontra.

>>43992
Disagree. I've seen so many who can't post without injecting /pol/ signalling. So many who can't leave their shitposting in one place and adapt to a new culture on a different board. It's all 'LOOK AT ME I'M A RACIST I'M EDGY' all the time with these people. I remember so much of this from when KC was in terminal cancer mode.

>>44001
It's pretty much this + pic related. I have never seen so apt a description of poltards and why they are fucking annoying than this. I think that of their many crimes one of the absolute worst they have ever committed against us was what was done to wojak, the way it was perverted and ruined, turned into something associated with vierkanal instead of us for absolutely senselessly different reasons and contexts than we had ever used it. They took that meme and raped it into the dirt. They did this while ruining my shitty little e-homeland I'd wasted a decade of my life onit dying was probably for the best for me tbqh until it was raped to death and its corpse desecrated. They were utterly foreign to us as they mostly were to vierkanal itself when those dumb asshole boomers and stormtards began flooding it back in 2009 or whenever it was.

I think that you also forget that things like last pic related happened
https://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/7/28/888292/-Anonymous-1,-Oregon-Tea-Party-0
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread598815/pg1
Basically those teafaggots backed by the full power of the Republican establishment and Republican propaganda outlets like Fox had raided vierkanal and finally found a way to coopt it just like they coopted the Truther and Ron Paul movements.

They raided vierkanal and took it over and ruined it. Then they and their godforsaken newfag sprog began shitty up other sites and they came to KC and fucking raped and murdered it and desecrated its corpse parading around like faggots IRL with muh memes. They never belonged on imageboards to begin with. They ruined 4kanker, they ruined KC, and now they've ruined America. /pol/ absolutely deserves to be bitched about and I think it's hilarious that they're probably now getting flooded with even more retards who got kicked off of reddit because the whole place is a septic tank and while it always was there is a remarkable difference between the the sort of people that were actual anons or /b/tards or whatever, and the pure human trash bydlo that dominate the site now. If you want to see and understand the real history and nature of what /pol/ is and why it's so thoroughly unwelcome everywhere, you only have to understand those two links and how this which itself was a perversion of anonymous from the other end in the later stages aka the moralfag crusaders
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0tM0y4cFro
https://web.archive.org/web/20080522123812/http://www.myfoxla.com/myfox/pages/Home/Detail?contentId=3894628&version=7&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=VSTY&pageId=1.1.1&sflg=1
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/08/exclusive-how-the-fbi-investigates-the-activities-of-anonymous/
became this
https://www.msnbc.com/kendis-gibson/watch/how-a-conspiracy-theory-started-on-4chan-and-ended-up-at-the-center-of-the-trump-ukraine-impeachment-investigation-70739013717
https://www.cbs46.com/news/wild-conspiracy-theory-qanon-hitting-mainstream-politics/article_712b071a-bd0c-11ea-9ba3-dfe57c894c9b.html

I also find it funny that you literally went "you know how /pol/ is always complaining well people always complain about /pol/ too" tier. I'd upload that pic but I've only got four slots and don't want the board descending into filth with this but suffice it to say culture wars are trash promulgated by the kinds of bydlo who don't belong on the oldschool internet to begin with and are only here because of the smartphone apocalypse

tl'dr while being a vast over generalization suffice it to say the demographic shift from young, above average intelligence apolitical to anarchist/libertarian leaning young men to a bunch of very below average intelligence Republican voting boomers is essentially the history of /pol/ /new/ and vierkanal as well as IBs in general and they're only here because shitposting from phones became a thing shortly after people from IB culture raided said boomers.

Oh fug, Ennio Morricone died. I wonder if they will bury him in a nameless grave next to Arch Stanton?
https://www.ansa.it/sito/notizie/cultura/2020/07/06/addio-a-ennio-morricone_13319023-9654-4ba1-a7f2-c3f53dbd7f60.html

>>43992
There's a big difference between /pol/ being hosted on a secondary shithole chan, and /pol/ being hosted on one of the most popular sites on the internet. Not only does it serve as a breeding ground for degenerates who are already on imageboards, it directs any prospective newcomers straight to the breeding ground before they can even see what the normal culture of the site is like.

If you google 4chan, you will see a link to /pol/ just below the link to the main site (or at least you could, for a long time). It's the only board that showed up like that on Google.

Just imagine how bad things would be if 4chan allowed its /pol/ to be as bad as 8chan's. There would probably be twice as many incel white nationalist shootings over the last few years, simply because more of the type of people susceptible to it would be shunted towards the really hardcore nihilism. Human behavior in aggregate can be strongly affected by structures and systems like that.

>>44116
Oh man. I'm trying to figure out now which of his soundtracks fits the feels of his death the best and it's not an easy choice.

Possibly Days of Heaven?

>>44117
You already made your point earlier in that other post (or, if you're someone else, didn't add much), but then you added this cherry on top

>incel white nationalist shootings

Talk about selective outrage. I also object to you calling 99chan a "secondary shithole chan". That site had users capable of maintaining good discourse in its prime.

Just because it is somewhat important.

https://www.dw.com/en/poland-elections-duda-results/a-54152011

Rather interesting and overall good news in world demographic development.

>Fertility rate: 'Jaw-dropping' global crash in children being born
>Researchers at the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation showed the global fertility rate nearly halved to 2.4 in 2017 - and their study, published in the Lancet, projects it will fall below 1.7 by 2100.

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-53409521

They predict peak population for the year 2064 at 9.7 billion and then a rapid decline to only 6.3 billion in 2100. So unless something unexpected happens, population collapse will become an issue in the long term. This marks a pretty big shift in thinking about the future in general and will take long to sink in.

Full study listing every country:
https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0140-6736%2820%2930677-2

>>44569
IIRC more or less what Hans Rosling has said all along. But he was a madman that used numbers and statistics and didn't use voodoo and rituals to predict the future.

>>44570
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FACK2knC08E 2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTznEIZRkLg 2010

There are more.

>>44569
There is a number of problems here:
The one is, once again, Capitalism. There are other economic factors at work with lots of children being born in developing countries obviously but the system of Capitalism itself necessitates that those trends continue as well as continuing the trend with outsourcing and flooding countries with cheap, non-union immigrant labor.

Honestly for the people who give a shit about muh brown people if they really wanted to stop that part they should sign up as many Mexicans/Turks/whatever into labor unions as they possibly can and I all but guarantee you that corporations will stop trying to bring in boatloads of immigrants as a cheap exploitable workforce. Nevertheless you're still going to have a system that's going to economically shrink massively with that kind of population decrease in such a short amount of time and even if you didn't they're still going to use technology to instead of making life better for everyone boot us all out of employment to live on the streets begging in some cyberpunk dystopia so people like Bezos can make another trillion.

As for the ecological consequences that is still a rather large population sitting on top of a rather fragile shelf and it will take decades if not far longer to begin reversing just the climate change that's already happened in the past century. Even with 6 billion people we're going to end up having food riots.

Of course on the other hand we also have rapidly decreasing numbers of effective antibiotics and other treatments for infectious diseases. In the Lord's wisdom he sent us coronavirus to wake us up from the problem without it actually being apoclyptic like if some super infectious version of Marburg or Nipah or whatever that actually can wipe out a third of the population starts floating around rather than a 1-5% deadly virus, so there is also always the high probability that something like that will happen not if but how much sooner and are we going to not be below third world tier incompetence in dealing with the next one--because if we are not, that alone will wipe out hundreds of millions of people practically overnight and shut down enough of the global economy to begin reversing or slowing some of the ecological damage.

>>44569

>good news

How?

>>44573
I suggest you take a look at one of the videos in. >>44571 The one with the boxes is nice.

>>44575
Tfw I live in America and I am still quite literally part of the walking bin. Which reminds me that I can literally afford to buy a bicycle right now. I probably should do soI am nowhere near being able to afford a luxury like a motorbike though. A lot of people particularly my generation don't drive because we can't afford it but I know 50 year olds like that.

Watching this has really made me realize the level of how poor a lot of people in this country really are. All the things that Hollywood told me about what living in America is like are lies. Oh well at least a lot of us still have nice things like air conditioning. My flat came with one (I wouldn't have been able to afford it otherwise then tbh) and my electric bill is cheap enough right now but it's gonna be real difficult to afford the heat this winter.

>>44574
Overpopulation will only be a temporary problem and largely solve itself without any drastic measures necessary. Mantra of endless economic growth can be retired and economy focused on sustainability in this century. Fighting climate change becomes easier. Older people can stay productive and integrated for longer. Developing countries have a chance of developing without always catching up to caring for bigger population.

Lots of upside, not much downside.

So, what exactly is going on in Portland?

https://abc3340.com/news/nation-world/mayor-of-portland-to-trump-get-your-troops-out-of-the-city-1

>>44598
Oh btw I watched this movie after your post and it was quite good. Is the hunting for squirrels thing something more than a few people actually do round these parts or is this to be seen rather metaphorically?

>>44652
Sounds pretty obvious to me. He doesn't have the economy or national health anymore so he's hoping to create a distraction about law and order by....flagrantly ignoring how law and order works in this country. It almost sounds like a rehearsal though and is why I don't give two shits what Republicans have to say about liberty at this point. These are the same people refusing to wear masks here and lecturing us about America becoming a Nazi NWO state etc and they turn right around and support shit like this. He's doing it because he's hemmhoraging support from everyone except his absolutely most fanatical core. The recent losses on multiple Conservative issues has alienated pretty much the entirety of right wingers and independents who hadn't yet flipped on him with things like DACA, gay marriage, he plainly stated "you take their guns, due process second at one point" which infuriated lots of people https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/376097-trump-take-the-guns-first-go-through-due-process-second
he doesn't have a single moral or ethical scruple or a genuine principle in his body but the added problem is he's also stupid as hell and seems to have a very genuine narcissistic personality problem so he's constantly flip flopping on whatever he thinks will make him look good in that moment.

Literally the entirety of what he is doing comes down to "it makes me look bad."

>>44654
Rehearsal for what? Canceling the election and going full Pinochet? Hard to believe.

I really don't get the rather open hatred a lot of people seem to have shown towards journalists but I have concluded that is because I simply don't understand just how anybody can possible love to lie, or lying, or liars, or defense thereof of the lie in any way shape or form. I have a profound burning hatred for untruth. I can even get doing it for art sake, or to push an agenda, but like I was saying earlier this morning it just goes so far beyond that as to almost be a kind of apocalyptic Kali Yuga tier ideology along the lines of something reaching the level of as foretold by Revelations, and for all their faults and at times neoliberal biases the journalists are one of the past people telling the truth: and so it is no wonder, then, that those even in other countries who have been infected by our decay, or grew to love the evil organically on their own, that they display such vehement hatred for journalists
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KlxT9RNfcs

I mean this is just absolutely incredible. How can anyone even lie so coolly and pathologically like that? No, Florida is not okay, in any sense of the word. That is indeed a state that made it illegal to feed the homeless, so every day it's hard to not see an almost destruction of Sodom thing going on.

There are some people who can actually see the profound decay and call it for what it is. I mean this is just incredible
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qyq4gkV3z0g

>US passports are currently useless everywhere except Mexico, Turkey, and Tanzania

I waited too long. I am now trapped here, awaiting destruction. Ticking down the days to do those last things I wanted to do or get done in normal society. I had no plan, I had no money, I had no passport or contacts to follow Lot out of the country.

>but hey at least you can still go to Tanzania

My options are that and becoming a watermelon seller. I'm not even counting Mexico because I'm amazed they havent rammed shut their border against us already which theyve repeatedly said they want to do meaning AMLO or somebody must have enough of a financial stakeprobably narco corrupted politicians in still allowing Americans into Mexico.

I cannot overstate this enough though, what Senate Republicans are doing is fucking crazy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7_Q-116mlg
The only rational explanation I can come up with is that the entirety of the GOP has now reached the new stage of grieving and have accepted their utter and thorough doom and so are deliberately trying to take the whole country down with them so that whoever's in charge can get bitched at and blamed for hundreds of thousands if not millions of deaths and a shattered economy for the next 4 to 8 years.

It doesn't make any fucking sense. If they drag their heels on this first of all it's going to be sending a very strong signal to the markets, and second of all all that hundreds of billions in liquidity is going to vanish practically overnight as the country careens straight into a situation likely even worse than where we were in March and April, and moreover it's hitting their states the worst with most of the blue states fine now. You're not getting people back to work and you're not getting them shopping or dining IRL anytime soon, which is further going to depress an economy that's been floated on hot air for awhile now. So now you're shafting everyone who votes for you and reaming out the entire economy. But thirdly and most importantly of all, by them not doing jack shit about the looming housing/mortgage/rent freeze, what you're talking about is instantly driving a freight train into a big beautiful wall that will make the whole subprime mortgage and lending crisis of '08 utterly pale in comparison.

They know this. Or they should know this. How can they possibly not know this? If this goes on for long enough when rent and mortgages come due and the forbearance is lifted then you're looking at tens of millions of Americans defaulting on their mortgages while getting thrown out into the streets.

But it's not even just that bad. It is so much worse. The banks are presently not required to have any fractional reserves. Yes you read that right; American banks are now and have been allegedly at a zero reserves requirement
https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/no-reserve-requirement-the-fed-will-replace-fractional-reserve-banking-with-no-reserve-banking-and-0-interest-rates-thousands-of-banks-now-free-to-create-limitless-amounts-of-loans-without-any-reser/
When you've got that coupled with all these really strange happenings like the lack of coin circulation--which by the way Europe and the rest of the world also had shutdowns more total than us why is it that I havent heard of any of them having sudden nationwide coin shortages?--it all adds up to a strange bad picture as if the conductor of the train has wholly given up on even the concept of breaking and is presently deploying his trousers as a parachute while he jumps off it, which is what I imagine present Russian oligarchs to have done in the late 80s and early 90s. There had also been unsubstantiated rumors--which, I might add, are but another symptom of the madness and idiocy afflicting this particular time and place; rumors are rampant and universal--that one possible reason for it could be to either hoard the metal for war resource reasons (I find this unlikely) or far more likely because they are expecting such a sudden and massive currency devaluation that everybody is going to start melting down all their coins just because the money itself will be near useless but the metal of which it's made will not.

Perhaps I should abandon the concept of accumulating any trinkets of dubious utility now, and investment in parchment instead.

>>44663
There isn't much that would surprise me at this point and frankly I have always suspected and known that FEMA camps are real and that they're located on various military bases with a massive network of warehouses and transit facilities I'm pretty sure I even know where my local transit one is

It all boils down to at this point how much of the country he thinks he can dupe into fighting a war for him because I suspect that for whatever reason he considers this now an existential threat, leading me to suspect that whatever illegal shit not only he but also his family did over the last 3.5 years is bad enough they'd all go to jail at minimum, like the pedo rumors. I really don't know. It's an actual legit possibility that had already been discussed by high ranking politicians and military here about just what to do if he happens to lose in November and then refuses to vacate the premises while claiming that the whole thing was rigged, crying "witch hunt!" and "coup!" or whatever.

Ah it's not this article but it touches on it
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/02/what-if-he-wont-go/606259/
Basically, at the political level things have accelerated to the point where we're now not only staring down the barrel of the gun at a huge housing/banking or other economic collapse AND a pandemic, but also plausibly the second time the entire United States not only faces a Constitutional crisis but a very real existential one.

The entire tone has been shifted to this "law and order" thing in response to the BLM and other protests because of how concerned he is about appearing weak, and because he's practically given up on anything except his smallest most fanatical core which consists of those RaHoWa types though it runs into the problem of how many of them would be useless in battle and also how many would want to fight for an open Zionist.

Idk m8 the political situation is fuckin crazy here right now which I try not to discuss but frankly at this point it's totally impossible because virtually every single other crisis, problem, and just plain stupid thing about this country like the utter absurdity of the mask debate all derives from the political crisis. I'm honestly not sure if I could fuck up America more than that if I tried to do it on purpose.

There have been lots of crackdowns and police state shenanigans which isn't new but it's the sheer audacity if the unconstitutionality of how it's being done so. But again, the thing is how many people would even go along with this and while part of the problem in why our cops are so fucked up is because a good number are a bunch of PTSD'd soldiers riding around with military equipment fresh from the end of their tour in Iraq and Afghanistan, a lot more are those psychopaths like that guy who murdered Daniel Shaver in the hotel hallway.

So there is also the possibility that things could escalate to the point where get The Egypt Scenario, in which case the vast bulk of the military ends up opposing the cops many of whom may remain loyal to Trump.

It should be noted that for example the unmarked green men "soldiers" at DC were actually BOP employees flown in from Texas, and not actually cops nor soldiers nor frankly for the matter anybody who'd have real authority to do anything, but rather a bunch of Texas prison guards. So I do think that that factors into this equation greatly.

>why are you talking like this though

Because it is a very real possibility at this point. Again I'm pretty sure that this is how things are at an imperial republic during its stage when someone tries to turn it into a Roman imperial family cult type of deal only we've got Crassus instead of Caesar.

https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/april-may-june-2019/how-trump-could-lose-the-election-and-remain-president/

https://www.thedailybeast.com/biden-says-military-will-remove-trump-from-the-white-house-if-he-refuses-to-leave

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2019/12/17/half-of-active-duty-service-members-are-unhappy-with-trump-new-military-times-poll-shows/

Damn I really should get into the habit of making actual citations and formatting correctly if I'm going to write long ass posts I havent even used APA in ages.

Of course this is not actually the first time the issue has been discussed however
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-military-coup-white-house-ethics-lawyer-democracy-danger-752896
Which ended up being a non-issue partly because he did do stupid shit yet again that got himself impeached for real this time and the Republican controlled Senate managed to stonewall everything.

This gets tricky however should things accelerate the freight train into the wall and conditions keep deteriorating here in the run ho to November, at which point all manner of things could happen. If for example the Senate turned blue it would be a much different thing than if he ended up losing and the Republicans held onto the senate and then decided to sink with the ship entirely by trying to keep him in office by any means necessary. That could really make things spicy here as the legislative would become in open conflict with the new executive who would be the commander in chief of the military, at which point all kinds of crazy shit can become possible for example each state trying to activate the national guard to back him up.

Tl;dr 2020 will continue to be a wildly flavorful year for Americans right up to the end full of all sorts of fantastic mystery prizes

Oh yeah apologies for the triple post fuck I almost forgot to emphasize that meanwhile all this political crap is happening right in the middle a the pandemic in the worst hit country in the whole world. So we can only talk about the consequences of the election under normal operations which is absolutely not the case because again, we're suffering this huge catastrophic epidemic with a third of the country refusing to even believe it's real and with 75,000 cases being confirmed a day it's no longer outside the realm of possibility that we could hit 200k infections a day by then, meaning that we can't even know for sure how much of our geriatric political class would even survive by then. Like I literally cannot even tell you for sure right now that Biden, Pelosi, McConnel, Trump, Pence, and Barr among others are all going to be alive and not hospitalized come November. The actual situation here is increasingly reminiscent of the kinds of scenes I only imagine happening in 40K to planets suffering an outbreak of chaos cults or genestealer cults or something.

>>44689
What is this heresy!? Don't you know the emperor protects?

>>44692
I wish I was good at drawing. I'd paint him as Horus. He truly is the Chaos Candidate, spreading Nurgles blessings wherever he goes. Not sure who that makes the emprah though probably either Fauci who he's busily betraying or Cuomo who's the governor of the Empire state he's always picking fights with and that had successfully purged the unclean ones from his state while banishing them all to the witch world of Florida

What the fuck why isn't EU cutting you guys checks
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/10/business/europe-coronavirus-stimulus/index.html
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/22/asia-pacific-markets-australia-retail-sales-gold-prices-us-dollar.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/20/world/europe/eu-stimulus-coronavirus.html
Wait why is the spot price of gold getting a boost. Shouldn't this be causing a considerable lessening of safe haven asset values as people continue to be given good signs of stability and growth in much more plausibly risky investment opportunities such as the Asian and European stock markets? Seriously though where is your guys' stimulus checks and/or additional uneployment benefits or whatever? Or am I simply misreading whatever they mean about using stimulus monies to shore up wages against layoffs or whatever?

>>44766
Because EU. It isn't EUs job to give us money. There is arguing and grumpiness because it is probably not the EUs job to lend money to the states too.

The stimulus package that was negotiated is sort of a mess. Basically damned if you do damned if you don't. The blame game is already in progress. Because of covid 19 everyone is in full national pride nation wide mode not just Poland and Hungary, I mean everyone. Instead of real leadership, I'm not talking about le stronk leader with funny mustache, but actual leadership, we have leaders who caters to the scared masses. And why wouldn't they?

We have a population in the north who suddenly are proud to work until they are 70 and looks down on everyone else who gets to retire at 65 or younger.
Fuck me, some years ago they were angry about it. And don't get me started on the ass rape of pension reform.

I can't say about countries in the south but they are probably angry about something related.

We are living in interesting times and I'm genuinely scared of what clowns will be elected in the next election.

>>44766
Ours are in two packages, both of which just got reduced. Jobseeker was a rework of the existing unemployment benefit that made it livable and took away some of the bullshit mandatory job applications and shit. They're reducing the pay and putting back the minimum applications and if a job you applied for turns out after you get more details to be not good for you (shit hours, poor pay, awkward location etc.) and you turn it down, then you get penalties, the typical tory line of "do literally anything or you're lazy and a dole bludger".

The other was Jobkeeper which was a payment made to employers to keep staff on the payroll. It's being reduced to $1200 a fortnight for a full time worker, and then later reduced again, while if you're one of the ridiculous number of people in industries that are reliant on jobkeeper right now but also heavy users of a part-time workforce, such as hospitality, then those part time workers now only get half the payment, which in the case of some guys I know is less than they'd have gotten with their actual wage. What's going to happen is just more people are going to fall off and be put onto normal unemployment tbh.

>>44766
All stimulus money in EU goes to elites 1% so they can buy new Ferraris with taxpayers money. Such is life in neofeudalism.

>>44780

> Ferraris

Oh come on. It's don't.

It goes to the 1% so that they can buy things that matters. Like infrastructure. Hospitals, water, land and so on. What is a Ferrari when you can have the peasants forever indebted because you bought a cities water infrastructure because IMF told the country to sell it or no money.

Ayyyyyyy Congress and the Senate are poised to finish working on some kind of a deal for cutting us all a second bunch of checks.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/terinaallen/2020/07/23/senate-unveils-second-stimulus-check-details-today/#3ab23e2c37ac
I don't even care about the UI at this point because I'm just hoping to be able to get off it by the end of the summer which is actually making me pretty nervous tbh because our sales are going to slump in the winter meaning I should probably just be prepared getting a second or even third job by then and hoping to fuck that the economy isnt so shitsavagaged at that time I can actually even get one but that extra 1200 in neetbux should help go a long way towards my survival in this country into the winter provided I can ensure my UI got straightened out from all the close to two months of weeks I hadn't gotten speaking of which I should check that today.

But see here the thing is which is making me more and more pissed each day because our cowardly and spineless journalists don't even bother to question it, fucking no one is not going to work because of being paid more by unemployment gibes. As a matter of fact this was actually a really major reason to why I didn't quit my own job when it was getting bad enough around here the first time around because you cannot collect unemployment if you quit your job or refuse to work.

I'm not sure how it works in all of the other states but you literally cannot collect UI if you either got fired or quit. Yes you read that right--not if you got fired either and for that matter I couldn't even collect UI before which made me suffer one of the most profoundly destitute periods of my life because I got fired for getting Lyme disease which because it made me unable to work I could not qualify. Yes, read that again. "You must be ready, able and willing to work" and you must accept any job offer given to you even if it is shit.

Everything that you're being told, especially these faggot politicians and business leaders they're all lying to you. I'm pretty sure that in most states if your employer offers you your job back that you have to take it or you get kicked off UI. Read that again. The idea that "it's too generous and our job numbers are down because the $600" is one of the most blatant and transparent lies I've yet seen about the economy and the best I've managed to theorize so far is that the reason they are actually so butthurt by it is because what's gonna happen is everybody will go back to work at their shit jobs with poor or no benefits at all and in a lot of cases being reminded of the complete shit we got during the pandemic me being told for weeks I wasn't allowed to wear a mask and then having someone from corporate tell me awhile later a bald faced lie that we never "couldn't" wear one after I demanded having a company policy in writing stating as such has permanently killed any shred of corporate loyalty I'll ever have at this point and they're going to come back and look at all this shit and say "I want better pay and conditions." THAT is the only reason I can think of to why they keep trumpeting this complete lie that the gibes are making people not want to work. I literally did not quit my job specifically because I knew that it would kill any chance of me collecting unemployment and that was before I found out about those gibes.

Honestly if they'd just flat out said I wasn't getting unemployment I'd almost certainly have quit my job by now and tried finding some way to manage getting by without being evicted. For me, in my personal case, that ended up being bribery to keep working and to keep taking my shifts and potentially being exposed to the virus.

But more importantly there aren't any jobs right now you stupid lying sinister fucks. We have double digit unemployment numbers right now because there aren't any jobs, businesses are still folding, and it's all because of the pandemic which was epically mismanaged in a way that no other country on earth has managed to fuck up this badly thus far. This is particularly true if you live in California, Texas, or the deep South or Southwest.

Sorry for the rant after posting the good news it's just I've gotten to the point where I need to turn the news off after every time some bubble headed journalist just brainlessly parrots what theyve been told particularly by senate Republicans and leading members of the business community who know full well that when this shitshow is all over and done with all of us are going to be demanding more rights and pay or are going to start up and unionizing. I know that I personally will likely be spreading pro-union pamphlets around every big chain store or corporate outlet once things finally start calming down around here if not before.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/unemployment-600-benefits-weekly-ending-coronavirus-pandemic/

I want to personally shake that woman's hand and thank her for finally having the guts and common sense to say that.

Speaking of handshakes
https://www.theweek.com/speedreads/926907/pompeo-tried-shake-hands-bunch-foreign-leaders-all-turned-down
A great big American comes to your country and tries to grab you or your girlfriends hand for a firm shake. What do you do?

But anyways so that's the news what's going on here today. Supposedly they're going to try hammering out the bill so there's "no interruption" albeit with seemingly no agreement on what the new gibes rate should be, only that it should be lower if you're a Republican, or same if not higher if you're a Democrat although afaik lately theyve dropped that whole "$2000 cash payments every month into 2021" spiel, which I think they had wanted on top of the $600/week which is just excessive. That being stated I read something that apparently with the sheer weight of federal debt we've just added in all the bailouts and funding in those bills they've passed so far that they couldve literally given every single person living in America one big $63,000 check. It's amazing. Which also btw lends me to rather disbelieve all kinds of crap they keep saying about how we can't do things like have student debt loan forgiveness (which I frankly don't even care about too much) or free healthcare for all. It's proven that they just don't want to, and that's because they don't actually give a shit about adding to our federal deficit either it's just they don't want to give that money to us or imply that us proles should expect or demand better than a burger and a coke at home and a five minute smoke break at work.

I am however still deebly goncerned about them doing some kind of stupid shit that flatlines our economy which at least theyve had the damn sense to keep our stimulus package going to lube the gears of the economy which they're also hopefully going to keep trying to fend off that looming housing and mortgage lending implosion. I mean I do gotta say that's it's gonna be a sad day in Whoville if they cant figure something out to keep something ridiculous like a third of our country from defaulting on our loans.

Regardless of all else while it's a I'll-believe-it-when-I-see-it issue and I'll count the money when I've actually got it, that's actually just enough money off the neetbux alone for where I could actually afford to build my own brand new computer first time in my life. Naturally I'd like to actually future proof the thing enough to where it's gonna have the ease of upgrade and not having every part inferior and/or obscure type of issue.

Naturally, I'm going to go out of my way to make sure not one dime of my 1200 stimulus NEETing money goes toward China.
Do any of you guys think we can actually even pull up out of our own tailspin right now? Or do you think no shits fucked and the American experiment is about to augur into the ground?

>>44780
>>44783
Maybe we should think up a better economic and administrative system? I'm only in a temporarily good situation because they literally have to have all that happen to keep the gears turning in a system that benefits them more than most which in this ome particular instance means just giving us out money por gratis at least in theory because otherwise the whole shitshow would fall apart. It does strike me as rather extraordinarily stingy on the part of eurocrats though the impression I've been getting is that it's supposed to be more up to the national governments to cut everybody checks and keep local issues down? Just what kind of a clusterfuck even IS the EU?

70 people from the editorial staff of Hungary's largest online newspaper, index.hu resigned, after the owner of the paper fired the chief editor over a disagreement.

Index is a major centre-left news site and it's the most visited in the country.
It was established in 1999 and has continually operated since purely as an online news source.
Index prided itself on being an "independent" media entity.

The editorial staff established a separate website a few years back where they'd whistleblow if the site's "independence" was in danger. Independence in this case of course meant that someone closely associated with Viktor Orbán or his party, FIDESZ bought the paper and started turning it into another government approved news source.

The disagreement arose from the existence of this site, when the chief editor changed the status of index's independence from "everything is all right" to "index is in danger".
Of course the owner of the paper wasn't very happy about this, so he fired the guy.

This in turn created a mass exodus of "journalists" from the site. They resigned after the owner failed to meet their demand of reinstating the fired editor.

Conservative news organs and government-close sources are celebrating the fact as a colossal blow to the "soros-network" and Hungarian liberalism.
Liberal papers and circles close to opposition parties are fearing that this signals the end of press freedom in Hungary, since this mass exodus makes the largest news site in the country more prone to "government takeover".
Some of these opposition circles claim the whole conflict was orchestrated by people close to the government to crush the opposition's media-capacity even more.

The collapse of index will make EU legislators further question Hungary's status as a democratic country, and it'll probably make them more prone to calling Hungary a hybrid-system or a soft dictatorship.

t.hank you for reading my article

>>44835
Note to self if I ever get rich fund a paper in Hungary just to fuck with him and his Fidesz partei.

>>44835
Nothing will happen. EU can't do shit since it only requires one country to veto anything and right now I can see at least one country that would. But what is he after? Besides ruling forever.

>>44841
The beauty of the EU is that Poland vetoes punitive actions against Hungary and Hungary vetoes punitive actions against Poland.

But that has been going on for a while now, so it's noting new.
The new and interesting thing is that the EU just had a new budget drafter alongside with the relief package.
They also wrote up a list of conditions that if the member states were failed to meet, their funding would be withdrawn.
Now, one of these terms was that the country has to be a Rechtstaat, or "A state that guarantees rule of law and rights". At Orbán's insistence and lobbying, this condition was actually removed.

The EU just lost its last ace up its sleeve. "Poland and Hungary misbehaves? Oops, we can't legally withdraw funding. Wat nou?"

To give you the perspective of the other side, the conservatives now feel safer, because the funding isn't dependent on the whims of "Brusselite bureaucrats" who keep twisting words and definitions just because they dislike a government.
The Hungarian government has an uneasy relationship with the EU. They take the money, but criticise the system vehemently, often starting media campaigns at home that aim to convince people that the Government is fighting to "keep the nation's independence from unelected bureaucrats funded by Soros".
A few weeks ago a minister gave a lecture at an even about freedom, and he said that "Communism is never lost, rather transformed. The old Moscowites turned into Brusselites". (Though you could say it was a political stunt meant for the domestic-scene. There is no genuine anti-EU sentiment here aside from a few minor radical parties. Nobody wants to leave the EU. Most people would probably rather have it reformed or something.)

It's a complex situation.

>>44842
I find it funny that he doesn't care that he outright say that he isn't going to live up to the demands of being a rechtstaat (fuck yea using one word to describe a concept).

What I do hate about people claiming unelected bureaucrats rule the EU is that if they are, they wouldn't be doing so without your country's consent. One funny thing is that the parliament threatens to say no to the long term budget because they don't like it. You know the part of EU that is elected as opposed to the evil unelected people that gather recently to discuss giving away money... no wait..

> It's a complex situation.

Oh yea. But sadly people like to believe the simple explanations. And reform isn't going to happen unless people start discussing what they want.

Oh shit that's right it's still McConnel and the GOP senate we're talking about here
https://www.forbes.com/sites/shaharziv/2020/07/24/potential-second-stimulus-check-confirmed-in-gop-proposal-but-not-1200-amount-or-75000-income-cap-stimulus-package-update/#65b682857f64
Welp so much for that. I guess I really should not be foolish by saying "I don't want to feel greedy" about the week or two UI that's missing because I'm actually likely going to need that with the overwhelming likelihood looking now like the entire country's about to hit that cliff and be totally cut off until September and even then there's not even any guarantee on the $1200 at all coming through. Which means time for us to get ready to hunker down.

Meanwhile...oh dear fucking God
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/federal-eviction-moratorium-expires.html
What the fuck are those idiots in Washington even doing??? I'm legitimately concerned that this stupid shit is going to precipitate a 2008 tier mortgage and lending crash that could only deepen the depression. That means you, yes you, will end up being affected by America's fuckups again. I'm not even likely to personally be affected by this in a direct sense. I'm seriously worried about it impacting me indirectly because if they fail to manage to push anything through there's going to ultimately be waves of millions of mortgage and other loan defaults across the entire country. August into September could end up becoming one of the darkest of times if they don't immediately straighten this shit out. I'm now twice as concerned because I never even got my brick of silver as a form of stopgap insurance against economic catastrophe this fail.

I must, absolutely must ensure that I have a few weeks worth of beans and get my last big UI payments and back claims resolved by the end of this month because I'm going to need that to last me for quite awhile. It's our busier season and I'm not actually making enough money from my job to even come close to covering rent right now. If that shit keeps up I literally need that money just so I can push myself deep into winter before "how do I pay rent" "how do I eat" "how do I keep the heat on" becomes the valid sort of questions to where my actual income stream fails me utterly. Shit and the economy is normally sluggish around here in the winter too.

How did Russians get past the 90s?

>>44843
Well, the thing is, Orbán doesn't ever claim that he's un-democratic or dictatorial.
He just claims that a democracy doesn't necessarily have to lead to liberal parties being in control.
He calls such democracies where the conservatives have an overwhelming support "illiberal democracies". Hungary is one such democracy.

This is the root of Hungary's conflict with the EU. Both sides claim to support democracy, yet they don't agree on what democracy means.
Orbán insisted on removing the Rechtsstaat part from the clauses, because the EU's leadership doesn't consider his non-liberal governing a full democracy because of its overly socially conservative outlook, and he wanted to prevent the EU from blackmailing him through funding-withdrawal in case there's a conflict over something the government does domestically. (Like de-facto making legally changing your gender impossible for example. Probably doesn't really sit well with liberals.)

And I think the EU went into it so that he doesn't fuck with legislation and vetos important stuff.

>>44859

> doesn't fuck with legislation and vetos important stuff

Most likely. Italy and other countries wants and need the money.

But isn't there something in the Hungarian election system that makes him have a majority. Sort of if you get X amount of votes you get additional seats or something? I think I read it somewhere. So even if he has a majority it isn't a proportional number of people who supports him.

> legally changing your gender impossible

When ever I see this all I can hear is.
"Curse them women with a penis. I visit them every week just to remind myself that I hate them."

>>44864
Yes, they re-worked the elections system, and it heavily favours stronger parties.
Basically it's a one round election where the candidate with the most votes gets the mandate. And since Fidesz is the strongest party and the opposition is fragmented into smaller parties (because they're idiots) the Fidesz-candidate wins since their voters are the largest minority.

If you ask the liberals, it's dictatorship, if you ask the conservatives it prevents a dysfunctional Parliament where a minority coalition party would hold too much power over the bigger coalition partner. (A thing which actually happened when the Socialists governed. They teamed up with the Alliance of Free Democrats, and those fuckers were making the shots, despite being the minor partner in the coalition.)
(Though despite this, Fidesz actually isn't the sole governing party, legally speaking. Officially it's a coalition government they formed with the Christian Democratic People's Party. Basically they're the religious, right-er extension of Fidesz. They're retards, and I'd kick every single member in the bollocks right after smacking every member of the "socialist" party on the head with a shovel.
The anti-tranny legislation was their idea and they cheekily passed the law packed together with the coronavirus-laws. Funny, innit?)

Can some Eacterners explain this for me?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/25/huge-anti-kremlin-protests-erupt-in-russias-far-east
I don't really get what's going on over there

>>44883
Tbh what kind of answer do you search for? If that murder accusation is valid? Why Kremlin is eager to replace a govenor?

Myself I would be interested in how this region is comparable to Catalonia or Scotland, the article only very slightly hints that a similar constellation might be the case. How is support for Putin distributed by regions, if that is the case anyway, might also vary on the cities or countryside.

>>44883
Basically, in 2018 during the governors' elections the citizens of Khabarovsk voted against the United Russia candidate, which meant they were voting for a placeholder person, who all but agreed to cede the election and barely even lead any sort of campaign. But after his unexpected success, he decided to ride the protest wave, engaged in anti-Kremlin rhetoric and adopted some popular policies. Moscow had to work with him still, but now, after the new constitution vote, the details of his involvement in some murder in 2004 have been miraculously uncovered, and he was arrested. The population of Khabarovsk is protesting this.

>>44884

>Myself I would be interested in how this region is comparable to Catalonia or Scotland

Russia have big number of nationa republics inside of it, but Khabarovsk not one of them even near.

>>44864

>"Curse them women with a penis. I visit them every week just to remind myself that I hate them."

And whenever I see this or its variations, I know the person in question acts in bad faith.

Consider suicide.

>>44894
Since we are all friends here and wants a serious discussion we don't really have time with questioning your sexual preferences. We can all tell that such a reaction is based on the fear that gay men are going to stick things up your butt when you are sleeping and the even deeper fear that you will like it.
Make any excuse you want, we already know from the fact that you just had to let it out.

> Consider suicide.

Since some things just don't change, have an old but good response from ages long gone.

https://www.salon.com/2020/07/23/mitch-better-have-my-money-protesters-march-to-mcconnells-home-as-he-weighs-80-unemployment-cut/
Good God this country is filled with and run by complete morons. Welp I guess that's that. There's nothing much else I can say except that this is politically self destructive as it is economically and you don't really worry about how to pay the credit card bills when you've been robbed and have no cash or passport or food just a Visa in the middle of Bangkok. We're truly in the woods right now with all this and I am fully expecting the economic outcome of the nation to become far worse by the Fall if they don't immediately get their shit sorted. Those jobs aren't there you morons. You're tanking our economy now.

I wonder if any foreigners watch our nightly news
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2O2DMMcuiUU
It's usually got more international segments but I think that in general last night's news should give you a pretty good slice of how things actually are on the ground right now. Yes, people are apparently threatening to kill doctors right now because they're convinced doctors and nurses are part of some vast conspiracy against Trump to sabotage the economy. For my part I'd give it about another week or two tops before I have to seriously start stocking up on beans again. In about 4 weeks we're going to mushroom with bat SARS cases. Mississippi's hospitals have already saturated and they are now triaging people.

>the future is here

Indeed Lester, it is. I also find it sad to recognize if we had a better system those robots would be doing all the work for us while we work comfy 30 hour weeks but instead what that probably means is more mass unemployment and stagnant wages.

This is seriously like I am watching USSR in 1990 right before my very eyes. I think I'm going to settle in early tonight and watch Goodbye Lenin in bed.

When this commercial came out almost 10 years ago, there was a pretty big controversy over how paranoid/racist it was.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTSQozWP-rM

In hindsight, it's a scene that I imagine is actually happening in Party meetings today, although because it was made by retarded Republican boomers, the cited reasons for the fall of America tend to be examples of the American government actually working for the American people.

>>45327
Fucking lol and on top of that with GOP being hugely responsible for waste it really is them now trying to spend their way out of the biggest basically self inflicted recession since the 1920s. Of course the added problem of which I am highly aware is that all that stimulus money being backed by Chinese owned debt is giving China the win on both sides because most of the shit people are spending their neetbux on outside rent is made in China. I've been trying to make a conscious effort not to send money to China but it's close to fucking impossible when all our corporations have already outsourced everything to the Chinese.

Walmart is the most notoriously horrible example of this and frankly I find it quite rich that they would say things like that and then go out of their way to bail out and publicly defend companies like Walmart. At least Trump finally tried hard to do something about it even if he did so stupidly and frankly I ak increasingly wishing he'd just be a more competent version of himself and start bossing around corporations like Stalin.

The TPP was pretty awful and Democrats also hated it but at least it made some geostrategic sense also. China has already essentially cornered the global market and has been convincing the rest of the world to abandon the United States and work with China on their own China centric trade agreements
https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/donald-trumps-pullout-of-trans-pacific-partnership-opens-way-for-china-1628745
Nobody is talking about this in our country but China just beat us on trade with the RCEP
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_Comprehensive_Economic_Partnership
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-38060980
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-china-is-rooting-for-trump-to-win-11596656684
Whatever I'm already considering how to leave this country so I can have a better life with more opportunities and freedom in Europe anyway. My longer term goal is trying to save up ten grand and have the kind of credentials or professional acumen to emigrate anyway.

>>45328
As someone in basically the same position, it's a bit more difficult than that. $10k is enough to fuck off to a 3rd world country, or even Japan or Korea if you don't mind getting an English-teaching-monkey job right off the boat. But you'll need more if you want to settle in a 1st world Western country.

And if you don't want to go to Asia, you're probably better off looking to NZ or AU, both for ease of immigration and for general long-term prospects. I can also say that, having been to NZ, it feels a lot like a version of America without any of our problems. Not that it doesn't have some of its own, but if you can find gainful employment it's basically colonial Anglo paradise.

Also, they have cheeky mountain parrots.

>>45337
I thought that the ANZ part of ANZAC was hard af to get into?

>>45342
NZ at least has a shitload of immigrants per capita, and a relatively straightforward points-based immigration system. At the very least, you can see what you need in order to get in. It isn't easy, but no first world country is easy to get into if you don't have money or critical skills.

>>45343
Honestly Ireland and New Zealand would probably be my first two choices. Idevengaf I'd much rather move to Limerick. At least their weather is nice there and I'm only going to get shanked not shot and won't have to declare bankruptcy from the bills. But as for NZ yeah it would be nice. Trying not to give into my wrath and start taking out all the oligarchs who fled there to their happening bunkers would be the biggest challenge though. If those people finally killed America and I was on the same island with them it would be a daily if not hourly struggle not to start making homemade black powder and disposable slamfire rifles to deal with the people who justice demands would need to face either court of our people or suffer street justice.

The birds would be a pretty ebin advantage though. If I was an oligarch having a kakapo pet would be my top life goal. Like to the extent that I've already mentally allocated a significant portion of major lottery winnings towards a charity for their pirds and seeing if any kind of genetech could bring them back from the brink so not retarded people could keep them like pet dogs.

>>45344
>>45343
>>45337
why isn't canada an option for you guys?

>>45345
Because if shit goes south hard enough here it's going to spill over into Canada. That includes most especially the fact that our economies are so intrinsically linked that an economic collapse here would pretty much immediately collapse Canada.

>>45346
Shit would need to go north for it to reach Canada.

>>45345
Besides this >>45346, me and my country might be miserable failures, but I'm not such a miserable failure that I'd move to Canada.

If Oz/NZ is America without any problems, Canada is America without any soul.

>>45348
Australia is mini America at this point. It's not the land of milk and honey. Also, NZ has low pay rates and high cost of living. Your idealised ideas of this part of the world are way off the mark.

>>45355
You underestimate how far America has fallen, and how low our standards are.

Even if you're just America with universal healthcare and a decent minimum wage, that's a massive upgrade. You also lack an unbridgeable continental cultural divide that will inevitably lead to a civil war. And NZ may be expensive as shit, but it's a fucking paradise of affordability compared to the "good" parts of America.

Personally I'd prefer Japan or Korea, but if you aren't a turbo-weeb Oz/NZ are the best slices of the world left.

>>45355

>Your idealised ideas of this part of the world are way off the mark.

That statement holds true for a lot ideas Americans have about different countries, regardless of political preferences.

>>45361
True. It's one of the traits that most annoys me about Americans, the constant telling me about my own country because the only place where problems can possibly exist is apparently America. Never mind that our economy is a joke at the best of times, with it being one of a banana republic, or the fact that we haven't had a PM go to term since 2007, ending up with unelected officials due to internal party politics (including the death of the moderate Libs and rise of fascists and evangelicals), or the fact that our rate of fatality in aged care is one of the highest in the world right now because it's completely unregulated and staff are getting fired for talking to their union. No, some random sep faggot (and I've seen it irl too, it's seriously obnoxious) will proclaim that none of our issues are actually issues.

>>45355
m8 I am well aware of how much of a complete godforsaken shithole Australia may be and how dismal its future prospects both geopolitically/economically and ecologically on top of all the usual crap lurching from Canberra and I still might consider Oz over here. In case you haven't noticed this country is like saying a chronic drunk and drug addict "oh he's always been that way" because you haven't seen him in several years you don't realize he lost all his teeth to meth and has been selling his ass for heroin money. Well actually I guess parts of that metaphor may be more apt than I even intendedI'm not even the guy with the junkie cousing btw.

This is not to say there aren't decent tradeoffs about this country but there's a reason for the general alarm you have been seeing from Americans lately. To be fair though, you are fairly low on my personal list of places to move to that I still consider habitable and that's including South/Central American countries like Costa Rica. But then again I fucking hate heat, light, and humidity, and if I moved to the only habitable zone in the north I'd get all three. But even still, I know the one family friend who left with his kids and Strayan wife to live with her in her homeland is probably in a much better place now.

>>45364

>lately

Lolno, burgers have been talking like this for ages. There's a reason that the slang for American here is associated with 'septic tank'. It's nothing new, and they still don't understand the nature of our issues or why they're as fundamental as those they claim to want to escape because they live in this fantasy world where the grass is the platonic ideal of green everywhere else. Like saying that we don't have geographic and/or cultural divides is a laugh because they're actually at the heart of the parliamentary issues we've been having that you claim to know about. The issues you see are compounded by many more that you feel by living here. America's get more exposure because it's America, not because they're in some way unique in concept.

>>45367
>>45362
It's also bit of that old "if X wins I'm moving to Canada" mentality that crops up every election year, where they're pinning all their hopes on some vague idea of what the rest of the world is like. Even when things are getting more unstable, it still feels like the boy who cried wolf.

>>45367

>Like saying that we don't have geographic and/or cultural divides is a laugh because they're actually at the heart of the parliamentary issues we've been having that you claim to know about

I never claimed that. You're talking to at least three separate Americans right now afaik. >>45359 is not me, >>45364 is. Like I said I am entirely realistic about that. It goes back to the whole thing a Russian professor told me when I asked him, "Alexei, it is true that Russia is shit like everyone especially Russians keeps telling me?" his response:

>well yes Russia is shit. But then again, everywhere else is also shit.

I do not personally expect any green grass anywhere, just endless fields of shit. However, I can actually try and grow a few beans in some of those shit fields. I do not expect to do so here. Furthermore I'm the American who posted that I was at one time worried I'd have to resort to an ambulance because I couldn't breathe. Little developed world things like not having to wait until literally the moment I think I am dying in five minutes to call an ambulance would be nice. Not having to resort to food stamps to lower my cost of living would also be nice.

You say all these things while being seemingly oblivious to how it sounds to not retarded Americans when some foreigners try to talk about this place like some land of milk and honey because they bought into the propaganda, though this has less been the frequent case lately, although even here I'll see people say shit like "lol I have nicer computer than rich Americans" as if you guys still have this memetically ingrained idea that everybody in America is rich.

You are right though and I think it is tempting for a lot of Americans to always think someplace else is nice and envision it like they see everything else, as one giant themepark. But I didn't say straya was a magical place, just that it's probably less shit than here in case you haven't been paying attention to our happenings. would you like me to tell you about your country some more and lecture you on why it is also shit and doomed to the same self defeatist failure as other neoliberal societies? :-DD

>>45371
Thing is that again, you claim that Australia is 'less shit' without actually having any real experience with living in Australia. My argument is that the issues here are different but no less fundamental than those in the US, but the fact that you don't face these issues presently makes them seem like they're less important. We have a healthcare system, sure. Thing is that it's overburdened and can take all day to even get through the emergency room in. I was sitting there with a wound that ended up almost needing surgery in the reception area for a few hours, and then left in a room in the ward for a few hours before anybody even checked up on me. Ended up losing around 12 hours on something that was a 45 minute job tops. If you want reasonable response times then you have to go private, and it's as deregulated as it is in the states. My sister's bf is a nurse and recently a guy came back from a private hospital with gangrene toes that he didn't have going in. One nurse in his company was working at a ratio of 60 patients per nurse.

On a different front, our constitution does not actually recognise the existence of pre-colonial peoples, and thus at the federal level there exist no guarantees against racial discrimination, only at the state level and this has allowed the protections of the Racial Discrimination Act to be revoked three times so that the feds could put boots on people's throats for profit. The Federal Government legally has nothing to stop them from revoking legal protections against discrimination, and indeed they outright ignore it in the Northern Territory because they wrote the act that they're operating under there in such a way that it is not subordinate to the RDA. This also violates the UN Charter of Human Rights, one of many such violations in this country.

Also, regarding benefits. You would have to break up your lifestyle to get them. If you're out of a job now in Australia, benefits are once again means tested, so if you squirelled away some cash for an emergency, or for retirement or something then the government wants you to go broke and then give you the money (~$500 week which is not much in an Australian city, at least half of that would be rent if I was living by myself, even more if I wanted somewhere with good transport links). They also want to reduce it back down to pre-covid levels which was widely considered unlivable. We're talking like $10 to feed yourself for a week on kind of rates once rent and bills and fuel etc. are accounted for.

What you see as a lesser evil is in fact just a very different evil, combining the worst parts of the British and American Empires. So I would prefer you didn't tell me about my country because again, you don't get the full picture in America, even this stuff which is a little more under the radar is not even scratching the surface of the lived experience here.

Internet connection is utter piece of shit. Hell, I am not even sure if my countryball is going to be Belarusian.
There are protests in Minsk second night, one man dead, police says, it's because of handmade explosion weapon in his hand, protesters' media say it's because of stun grenade in his hand.

>>45374
*becuase stun grenade from police killed him.

Oh, look, I am a burger.

>>45374
Been following on RFE. It's pretty nuts. The way Luka talked about the protesters as 'his sheep' is pretty fucked up too. Can definitely see this getting really ugly unfortunately.

Fresh news digest:
1st line of Minsk metro is closed (out of 2 :DDDD)
Military vehicles are approaching towards the center of Minsk from south and north

>>45378
Shit mate. Good thing old love opposition candidate got the fuck out when she did.

>>45379
They say special services moved her out of country. Recently there was posted a video with her call to stop protests. However, she read that from paper, also they say ot was filmed in Central Election Comission.

I can only suppose it's going to be hot this night.

>>45380
Stay safe, man.

>>45373
interesting. you could have described the situation of the german welfare state with that post. parties in the bundestag don't even recognize those as actual problems except the oldschool socialists who are more or less irrelevant. i expect nothing on that front from "progressive" liberals aka greens (who are going to rule next along the conservative party) nor from the "social democrats", because it was actually them who brought forward all those neoliberal "reforms" some time ago when they were in power together. privatizations and neoliberal reforms decreased the quality of our public healthcare massively during the 2000s. same goes for unemployment benefits. now you basically need to sell everything first in order to be eligible of receiving €400 plus rent monthly. this is all still kinda looming under the surface right now, because the unemployment rate is relatively low and living costs are still somewhat reasonable, however if the unemployment rate ever goes up for some reason we'll get all of a sudden a massive amount of extremely poor people, which might cause domestic consumption to tank. but if right-wingers get into power, which isn't entirely unlikely, they're going to privatize the welfare state even more or get rid of it altogether, even though social welfare is actually written in the constitution. right-wingers are only about muh patriotism, muh islam, muh gender, muh military/police, muh climate change isn't real and muh corona is just a flu, wearing a mask is taking away muh freedoms.

>>45378
Here in Novopolotsk yesterday night was really fucked up too. Militia threw flashbangs at protestors and arrested pretty much anyone they wanted: they got two guys simply for shouting "Shame!" and even some woman with her daughter who were going home from the store. Some people got hurt by flashbangs (they produce some metal shards when they blow up) and they still arrested them and interrogated them without bothering to treat their wounds. Менты совсем охуели.

Nevermind the countryball, should be Netherlands or something. That asshole Lukashenko went full North Korea and is blocking the Internets, so I'm using VPN. Doubt that I will post again soon, although if the protests continue in this week, I will probably attempt to film them from a safe distance and maybe post it.

>>45385
Dude, if this were NK aka North Korea, you wouldn't be posting at all, it's rather Navinki athmosphere.

The entirety of New Zealand has returned to level 2 restrictions, and level 3 has been announced for Auckland's greater regional area, shortly after four new cases were discovered in the Auckland regional area.

>>45382
Honestly if you want a really scary assessment of what comes ahead you should look to our country as a prime example of what not to do. As I understand it you guys are basically already acting somewhat like us for the pandemic
https://www.thedailybeast.com/20000-gather-in-berlin-for-anti-mask-day-of-freedom-protest
https://www.rt.com/news/496883-berlin-protesters-coronavirus-arrests-police/

>>45385
Pfft when you say it like that it sounds like the usual Tuesday night here. It doesn't even sound like theyre flash banging and shooting at Austtalian journalists yet.

It does seem that this pandemic and economic thing has caused pretty much every issue to really start boiling over though. I have concluded this day in a state of complete demoralization that I am truly not long for this present job. It is highly unlikely in my estimation that things won't get to a head even this week where I'm going to be told not to wear gloves at work at which point I'm probably just going to tell them flatly no do what you will though it'll depend on my mood.

>>45395
No, but they're known to raid their offices and steal incriminating evidence of war crimes by the Australian military. Again, the problems are different without being less fundamental.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-05/abc-raided-by-australian-federal-police-afghan-files-stories/11181162

It should return to normal Belarusball now, Beltelecom said blockings are over.

>>45410
Great that foreign cointries stopped their horrible attacks on peacefull belarus

>>45418
Yeah, those perfidious imperialistic Czechs really did they darnedest to cut Belarus from the rest of the world, but our superior IT specialists have managed to thwart them. Still, evil puppetmasters from the West keep interfering in Belarusian affairs by orchestrating protests against police brutality. It's evident that such protests could never arise spontaneously, because true patriotic Belarusians enjoy being hit by batons, degraded and humiliated. Those who don't are being paid by foreign powers.

>>45426
acab

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-water-trump/trump-hair-rinsing-complaints-prompt-u-s-to-ease-shower-standards-idUSKCN2582Y1

Lolwhat

>there is a chance we get 4 more years of this

>>45431
You have to understand that our based Trumpmenbashi has been doing and saying stupid fucking shit like this for close to four years now and so people here are pretty much numb to it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_y5xY829UoY
He's an incompetent living meme factory. Just recently when talking about it he also described us as winning these "big, beautiful world wars." I am not paraphrasing. That is what he said. He's a psychopath so he doesn't actually know what the emotional words he uses means. Yes this is the guy that poltards ruined KC over. At least we don't have to worry about her emails.

>>45410
How are you holding up?

I've got the feeling that media here isn't talking about the happenings much, but on the net you will stumble upon people affected in all kinds of different communities. Eg. the arch linux mailing list, which is usually never political: https://lists.archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-dev-public/2020-August/030069.html

>>45472
After Lukashenko claimed that the only people who go to protests are unemployed, alcoholics and drug addicts, the workers from several (state-owned) enterprises started protesting, including pretty big ones like BelAZ, MAZ, MTZ etc. It seems that there is a strike in my town's oil refinery too, which means that several other businesses dependent on it may stop.

There were rumours that Lukashenko has left the country, but he made an address in which he denied that. It still proves nothing because there is only a small circle of officials around him and he doesn't give public speeches (which is a logical precaution for him, since there is a high possibility that he would be torn apart by people should he show his face outside). It's pretty likely that he evacuated his family though (allegedly to Turkey, but then again, it's only rumours).

Meanwhile local officials handle the crisis with varying degrees of competence. Mayors from several cities agreed to meet people and address their demands (mostly concerning police (well, militia) brutality). My town's mayor will hold a meeting with people later today. These meetings also serve another purpose: if Lukashenko's regime actually falls, the officials can cover their asses by saying that they tried to alleviate the situation. Minsk's mayor, on the other hand, came up with a wonderful solution to the problem of police brutality: he said that if you don't want to be beaten up by the militia, then don't go protesting in the streets. A grand idea, mr. mayor, but here's a better one: if you don't want people to go protesting in the streets, then don't rig the elections.

So the situation stays volatile. So far there were only peaceful protests and clashes were caused by the militia themselves who arrested, beat up and shot rubber bullets at people for as much as looking at them wrong, but if the government (or rather, the organized crime group that calls itself government) makes a bad move (like announcing the official election "result"), all can turn into a full-scale riot.

t. other Belarusian

Don't know if this is news to anyone but:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/14/teen-models-powerful-men-when-donald-trump-hosted-look-of-the-year

>>45529
I only read through half it if that so far but yeah this would probably surprise some very ignorant and naive people but it isn't news to me. I've known for awhile now that Donald Trump ran a modeling agency that was a human trafficking front in similar manner to what Epstein was doing and that is why he is surrounded by loyal pedos like Dershowitz and Barr. When you understand that angle the rest isn't surprising and that is part of why Donald Trump considers his election loss to be an impending existential threat because if somebody not a blackmailed pedo rose to power it means a new head of the DoJ, the IRS, even the Department of Labor and others could fuck him because they oversea human trafficking concerns.

>>45531

It is in Norwegian but she basically says that Trump made up excuses to go into the dressing rooms were they changed and that there were private shows for the judges aboard a yacht.

https://www.nrk.no/rogaland/xl/deltok-pa-trump-fest-som-17-ar-gamal-modell_-_-eldre-menn-sikla-etter-unge-jenter-1.15096772

But to sum it up. Rich old men doing what they want like they always have done.

It is just unbelievable.

>>45535
It's just a vocal minority that is paid by the West to shake the boat that we're together in. They were zombified by their Facebooks and Telegrams and now want to turn our strong, stable and peaceful Belarus into the Europe's latrine. Thankfully, our wonderful, honest and totally legitimately elected leader will not let them to tear the country apart.

>>45536
>>45535
Is it true that NATO is rallying troops at your borders and everyone should take their pitchforks and be ready?

>>45538
It's okay, our Russian brothers promised to help us overcome this threat. Besides, our glorious leader asked one of the airborne brigades to relocate to Grodno. If those dastardly Lithuanians dare to invade us, it will stop their progress at the very beginning.

>>45539
Good thing they are preparing for the coming invasion. Last time they were caught by surprise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teddybear_Airdrop_Minsk_2012

To the left: Lukashenko's meeting
To the right:

>>45543
Ironic that on lukashenko meeting not all people was pro-lukashenko lol

>>45543
Do you think there is a real possibility of Moscow proving decisive in backing Lukashenko, or are they just edging their bets? It would seem a bad idea to come out fully on support of Lukashenko, in my view, but the Kremlin can act seemingly irrational at times it feels threatened. I also wonder how Lukashenko's actions in the run-up to the election will play into Moscow's actions towards the current unrest in Belarus, surely arresting the 33 mercenaries would prove him to be more unreliable than Moscow hopes for.

>>45552
There are rumors, that Russian special services are approaching Belarus.
We'll see how it goes.

>>45552
Realistically, the Kremlin is ready for the Armenian scenario, whilst it would be better for them to see Lukashenko remain in power, direct involvement, especially using armed forces, is pretty much out of the question. Also, they know full well that even if the opposition in Belarus wins they will have to work with the Russian government and maintain cordial relations, if only for economic reasons.

It's already starting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOAb9UhpMVo
I really don't know wtf these landlords expect. Do they seriously all think they'll fill these vacant spots??? Meanwhile all the schools are opening and it's already turning into a dumpster fire and on top of all that the useless fucking senate just went on vacation until after Labor Day which means nothing at all will be done about the next stimulus and health bill until after September 5th. Everyone leading the senate should be fucking fired.

>>45564
Sooner or later we’ll realise that housing is not an investment, but rather a utility, which if made too expensive will criple the rest of the economy.
Landlordism is bad for everyone, except the landlords.

>>45562
I hope belorussians will not allow them pass. Or you might be ended occupied.

>>45563
Well some in moscow who want rebuilt "muh empire" and gain at least some internal popularity (we will not say the names :---DD) might decide that it's exelent time for "bloodless" conquer

EU is kinda ready to support protesting workers.
To be honest, I am kinda afraid what is going to happen to Belarusian biggest factories. However, people don't seem to agree with Lukashenko's policy anymore.

>>45566

>I hope belorussians will not allow them pass. Or you might be ended occupied.

They already say these rumors are fake. Nice double dubs btw.

>>45566
Yeah, that's extremely unlikely, the potential gains are nil and the risks are enormous, it's a complete opposite of the Crimea situation.

>>45570

>I am kinda afraid what is going to happen to Belarusian biggest factories

Quite a bunch of them had only three or four working days a week already lately, so some strikes won't make that much of a difference. Some (like MTZ and MAZ) will need to go through a hard restructuring later in order to stay alive, if Lukashenko will lose the power. Regardless, if the things stay as they are, we will keep going down deeper into a swamp and eventually crash so hard that the 90s (which Lukashenko loves to bring up as the example of how shitty everything was before he came to power and how wonderful is everything now) will feel like a fucking paradise.

>>45572

>Quite a bunch of them had only three or four working days a week already lately

Heard about that at Gomselmash for sure.

>Regardless, if the things stay as they are, we will keep going down deeper into a swamp and eventually crash so hard that the 90s (which Lukashenko loves to bring up as the example of how shitty everything was before he came to power and how wonderful is everything now) will feel like a fucking paradise.

Yeah, Russian money flood is thinner every year. That is the question - why money wasn't invested in economical independence, so Belarus could live fairly well after Lukashenko?
Because there is no Belarus after Lukashenko, according to Lukashenko

>>45570

>EU is kinda ready to support protesting workers.

I don't want to pretend I am privy to the EU's inner thoughts, BUT I think they understand that intervening too strongly would risk escalating the unrest into a "West VS Russia" influence war, which would surely lessen the possibility of a relatively peacefully end to Lukashenko's rule. All the more so since it seems from an interested outsider's perspective that the Kremlin isn't fully committing to Lukashescu, but they might if the opposition takes an anti-Russian stance. Because I can do nothing else, I pray for Belarusians :DD

>>45574
It doesn't matter whether a bunch of Belarusians die of Belarus gets its own Donbas, the lives of a dozen thousand people cost nothing compared to the lives of millions people suffering under political and economic oppression of the corrupt elites limiting the economic growth and siphoning the wealth off to the West, both in Russia and Belarus. Everyone is interested in free market and the access to the EU market in particular could help Eastern European exports, thus lifting millions of people out of poverty and preventing thousands of suicides, homicides from occurring. Just think of the drug and spirits abuse, think of the possibilities improved healthcare could bring and how many it lives could save, certainly more than 15 000 thousand people (the amount who died in Donbas). The real question is whether the possible Russian intervention in Belarus will hasten the decline of Putin's regime and thus liberation of the Russians, introduction of economic reforms and slow turn towards the West. On one hand, if the Belarusian protesters succeed in overthrowing Lukashenka, the Russian intervention is guaranteed and this in return guarantees the harsh Western response and cements stagnation of the Russian economy (which was growing 1-2% GDP per capita since 2014 and according to World Bank and IMF isn't likely to change its course after COVID). It's hard to predict whether the harm done to the Russian quality of living and thus to the Putin's polls will be greater than the gains made by the new Russian political ampaign targetting the West, like in 2014 when the Russians influenced by the state media sincerely thought that the aggression is justified because the West is trying to damage Russia and Maidan is a CIA plot.

>>45611

>It doesn't matter whether a bunch of Belarusians die of Belarus gets its own Donbas

Ebin.

>>45611
I can understand why someone would support what you say, some degree of accelerationism in the collapse of the Russian sphere followed by an escalation in tensions and hopefully soon the toppling of the current Kremlin. But I don't think sanctions and escalation are necessarily always useful things in the perspective of what the EU can do to help Belorussians. Antagonizing Russia isn't always a good thing since it enables the present Russian government to stoke patriotism as a means securing its own position by consolidating its support base and rallying forces against evil West. More so, creating a pariah state that's burdened by stacks of sanctions wont really help ensure peace and stability in the region.

>On one hand, if the Belarusian protesters succeed in overthrowing Lukashenka, the Russian intervention is guaranteed and this in return guarantees the harsh Western response and cements stagnation of the Russian economy (which was growing 1-2% GDP per capita since 2014 and according to World Bank and IMF isn't likely to change its course after COVID).

I disagree with both. Firstly, it seems possible that the Kremlin would consent to Lukashenko being overthrown without seeking a repeat of 2014. It surely would be the more sensible option - not seeking to galvanize the Belorussian opposition into an anti-Russian stance and not tying the political survival of Lukashenko with the survival of United Russia. Obviously the ideal situation for the Kremlin would be for the protests to fade out and then be OMOH'd Does Belarussia have an OMOH, or do they have a different name? :DD when there are only a few people left at the protests. But I think they realize this situation is unlikely.

Secondly, I don't think it would be smart for the EU to have a post-Lukashenko Belarus being the poster child for turning westwards - at least not in 2020. To me it seems that these predictions of economic stagnation are very, very optimistic. A worldwide economic crisis seems to be more likely than merely stagnation. For a Belarus that has to rebuild its political structures Far more so than Ukraine had to after 2014 during a global economic meltdown might really taint the idea that eastern nations can just turn westward and see improvement.
I believe that the crisis will just deepen and deepen and there's a real risk of people contrasting the post revolution years with the years of the Kolkhoz director and seeing it all as a 90esque regression.
I really don't know why Lukashenko didn't just let go of the wheel, if he did he surely would have been remembered as at least a decent leader - possibly even being looked back in nostalgia. Are there some structural reasons for him feeling pressure from some groups to remain in power or is this better attributed to the character of the man himself?

>>45611
I don't know why you expect the free market to not end up being anything other than totally gutting all your local industries and siphoning off all that wealth to the West. The only difference will be it is Western oligarchs who actually own it rather than Eastern ones. Oh, and your shiny consumer plastic could plausibly get a little more affordable.

>>45628

>not seeking to galvanize the Belorussian opposition into an anti-Russian stance

Just for information: pro-EU opposition (and pro-West, if we are going to go deeper into 90s) has never been very popular among people. 10-15% really, but that's not that much. Also Ukraine is a kind of example for many people how to go full pro-West and this example scares them.
People standing up under WRW (white-red-white) flags today is not the kind of people which usually stands up. Most people were for long time Lukashenko supporters, and I except many of them would not want cardinal changes in economy or political sphere.
I am not a fan of EU either, rebuilding economy that harsh is going to ruin the country.

>I really don't know why Lukashenko didn't just let go of the wheel

He already said he'd rather be dead that non-elected. Now he's getting ready to enclose protest leaders one by one.

Fresh news: EU gibs to Belarusian people 53 million euro, Lukashenko's economists estimate losses for 500 million dollars

>>45628

>Does Belarussia have an OMOH

Oh yes, and these boys garnered quite a lot of infamy during recent events, to the point that some people actually demand its disbanding. By the way, our ОМОН is the only one that should be called by this acronym, since we're the only country whose police force is called militia (if I'm not mistaken: maybe some other post-Soviet countries still have the sames), and ОМОН stands for "Отряд Милиции Особого Назначения" – something like Militia Special Forces Team. Russians have it too, and since they renamed their militia to police, logically it should have been turned into ОПОН, but they decided to keep the old familiar acronym and just changed the meaning to Mobile Special Forces Team.

>I don't think it would be smart for the EU to have a post-Lukashenko Belarus being the poster child for turning westwards

Yes, turning westwards is not the most prudent course of action now, and integration into the EU (which our zmagars see in their wet dreams) is out of question: we'll just become a useless burden and/or a source of cheap labor fir the West. Besides, Russia is our main trade partner and cutting ties with them would be a harsh blow on our already barely working economy. Although being more open for foreign investments should do us good, I think.

>I really don't know why Lukashenko didn't just let go of the wheel, if he did he surely would have been remembered as at least a decent leader

Hah, nah, not a chance anymore. It would have been possible some fifteen years ago, but now something really extreme should happen after his tenure in order for him to regain his reputation, like a complete collapse of economy (provided that he manages to shift the blame on someone else, of course, because if this collapse happens, it will be in no small part his fault) or a civil war.

>Are there some structural reasons for him feeling pressure from some groups to remain in power or is this better attributed to the character of the man himself?

Who knows? He's addicted to power, that's certain, and he tends to view Belarus as his personal estate, so losing it all will probably cause a withdrawal or something. The bureaucrats around him are also interested to keep him on his post, because without him they may lose theirs after people realize how unnecessary those bureaucrats are. There is also the possibility that without his complete control over the judiciary system some unsavory facts from his biography will resurface and earn him a long time in jail or even death penalty.

>>45629
Dude, you don't realize how fucked up everything here is. Heavy industry is fucked (apart from few exceptions, like Belaruskali and enterprises that work with petroleum), light industry is fucked, food industry is decent but they don't export much, agriculture still (barely) works by Soviet methods in the form of kolkhozes and sovkhozes because apparently Luka has a hard-on for them but people only work there if they can't find a better job. Luka also pretty much killed off any sorts of private enterprise including small businesses. IT sphere is doing good so far, bringing loadsamoney from the West, but I wouldn't be surprised if Luka will bleed it dry too. A lot of state-owned factories have way too many employees, and I doubt that they took them because they're huge Keynes fans, but so that Luka could boast that we have less than 1% unemployment. A lot of these factories have negative income and they're only kept alive by redirecting money from other, more successful enterprises. Should Luka fall, extensive changes to our industry and economy will have to be made, including de-nationalization and inviting the foreign capitals, otherwise we'll be in deep shit. It sometimes gets quite weird: our healthcare is single-payer (AFAIK, Western leftists jerk off to single-payer furiously), but in order for it to fix its problems it should probably be better off becoming insurance-based.

Luka claimed not so long ago that the opposition "wants to pull off a bourgeois revolution here". At first I thought that he didn't know what he's talking about (as always) and simply chose the word "bourgeois" to appeal to sovoks (the only part of electorate who still sincerely support him), but then I realized just how hilariously accurate his remark turned out to be: from the Marxist point of view the bourgeois revolution follows the feudalism and precedes capitalism. So yeah, in order to fix our shit and start implementing social reforms, we'll first have to build decent capitalism after the twisted bureaucratic-feudal system that Lukashenko created. XDDDDD

>>45629
The poorest member of the EU, Bulgaria, had $9 000 GDP per capita in 2019. Russia, the "sovereign champion" of the post-Soviet republics, the richest post-Soviet republics aside of the Baltics, had $10 000 GDP per capita, and it's the richest independent post-Soviet state.. Geography and access to the EU market matter. Poland, Hungary, Romania, Baltics experienced rapid economic growth and all of that is without high economic inequality, political oppression, assassionations and autoritarianism which happened in Russia. After the 2014 events the gap between Russia and Eastern European members of the EU started only widening, Putin's not been trying to introduce any economic reforms despite all his sound words about the state trying to achieve X growth a year or X foreign investment as % of of GDP, so it's save to assume that the gap will only grow. Most likely Russia will remain stagnant til the Putin's poll ratings melt down due to lack of growth and he will be forced to give more economic freedom or increase oppression. Even the Polish toilet cleaners benefited from the EU because it's 100% better to clean toilets in London for $1,800 a month and later return to Poland than simply clean toilets in Poland for $700 a month til the end of your life. The Eastern Europeans, no matter whether it's the economy or a simple low class individual,
benefited from the European membership.

>Oh, and your shiny consumer plastic could plausibly get a little more affordable.

You started war for independence because the crown was taxing your consumer goods, and your nation idolized that. The Soviet people overthrew the USSR because they believed that if they adopt the Western ways, they will achieve the same quality of living. You started a trade war with China and Americans hate CCP, despite the fact that billions of people were lifted out of poverty by the government on an unprecedented scale, because you don't like that the American businessmen no longer pay as much as you want, and you can't buy even more shiny plastic although you already have highest purchasing power per capita amongst the great powers. The whole colonization was about producing, buying and selling more shiny trinkets. It's normal for history and people's aspirations to be driven by desire to improve their own quality of living.

>>45638
I just realized the massive irony of post Soviet staters literally saying

>we want Capitalist revolution to improve our material conditions

:--DDDDDDDD

I knew I'd get a reaction out of that post too
On a serious note though no that is not ultimately what the Revolution here was about however that being stated America spent almost the next century as a slave state, so, all that PR about freedom I tend to question at this point to such an extent I'd consider it spurious to say we even had freedoms at all. Actually one of the best likes about the Revolution--and it saddens me greatly that we've been degraded to the point they think shiny trinkets is what it meant to begin with--goes along the lines of "those who are willing to sacrifice essential liberty for security shall have neither in the end" and that whole "depart from us then, may your chains rest on you lightly and may posterity forget that you ever called yourselves an American." For all the shit that can be said of us I at least do value the fact that, regardless of how fucking pants on head retarded the ultimate reaction, the general attitude towards everything including something as basic as mask wearing came from the attitude of "you can't tell me to do jack fucking shit Mr. Government."

But of course, our country had sadly never democratized the markets which is what allowed that creeping tyranny into our homes to begin with and I do mean into our homes with crap like Alexa. Looking back on it that back and forth about Windows is another great example of the mentality, where rhe standard American is not even going to give a shit that hackers or criminals are hijacking his machine but by god the government better not look at his metadata or corporations. The problem being that the country is ran by powerful corporations so our alleged political freedom is totally irrelevant particularly when Americans are willing to suffer any tyranny of corporate power directly.

As for Slavs somebody already stated it directly about Belarus becoming EUs cheap labor market, and a Polish plumber is willing to waste his professional degree plumbing toilets more because he can keep sending it back to the land of the depressed Zloty. We have exactly the same metric here with the Mexicans many of whom had just come here so they can keep sending back more valuable dollars.

Other than trolling I wasn't implying that Belarus of all places wasn't a fucked up depressing economic shithole. I am well aware of that. I am however pointing out that it is difficult to enjoy trinkets without a roof over your head. Having been literally homeless before I am well aware of that, and the logistical problems in hiding your meager possessions, and having my good shoes and tablet taken one night. Under those circumstances what the fuck does it matter to me that a shrinking middle class can waste their money on installing Big Brother spyware like Alexa in their living rooms?

Not that any of this matters mind you because for a great many people we've been either stagnating or in a state of decline for two decades now. A hell of a lot of people live under conditions of deprivation.

The moral of my story is you shouldn't be like some twat starry eyed lefty journalist in the 70s who thinks he can find enlightenment in a Soviet factory any more than you should be a naive utopian dreamer about full market liberalization and whatever vision you have of marrying into the free market Wect. Sometimes the grass really is greener on the other side. Sometimes it's not. Sometimes it is but the grass is shit anyway.

As for Russia itself being a low GDP shithole I'd also just like to point out that while you had to queue to get a car that they and you are partly the legacy of a system that crashed and Russia itself turned to an even greater heap of shit in the 90s because of it to the point it spent close to three decades being a sad joke instead of feared, and that I as an American in a country that was industrializing what 50, 60 years before Russia still don't own a car to the point I abandoned even the idea of owning and affording to own a car unless I hit the lottery. I mean hell if this pandemic never happened and I was dead set on owning a car and getting it on the road I somewhat doubt I'd have a used one in under three years anyway.

>>45645
I can see the question of Belorussians having reached boiling point of an ossified tyrannical dictatorship that fakes elections and is more than willing to violently repress the outrage of the people they lie to, threw this thread into the most dull question of the 20th century. Truly, discussing current political news is like a ritual that summons the most vicious type of poison some would even call it cancer.

>>45645

>As for Russia itself being a low GDP shithole I'd also just like to point out that while you had to queue to get a car that they and you are partly the legacy of a system that crashed and Russia itself turned to an even greater heap of shit in the 90s because of it to the point it spent close to three decades being a sad joke instead of feared

The two examples you pick are very indicative of what sort of prism you might be viewing the questions before you. The downside of the USSR's rotten system you selected is having waiting for a car, and the best example of Russia's post-soviet failure that came to your mind is that it wasn't a feared state anymore for it was weak.

https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2020/june/1590933600/anna-krien/screens-ate-school#mt

I post it here since it is our political thread. It's an intresting read about the growing inflience of big tech in the angosphere. Thank doggy dog this shit is not prominent in Europe/Germany I think. The apps sound shockingly stupid and I would prefer an in-class discussion we had since secondary school/high school over this crap any time. I mean apps that go for game design instead of simple knowledge provision? I was bored in school a lot but I'm really thankful I didn't have addicting tech gadgets to make up for it but instead observing my peers and think about it.
The articles makes clear that not just the pupils are the ones who need tech "competence" but the school administries. And they definitely don't learn that from using big tech readymade nibbles. Education is sold under marketing buzzwords and it breaks my heart. Fucking paternalizing big tech.

it would be cool to name the news thread news, politics and society or something

>>45801
You got no idea how deep it runs here dude. A mining company was able to secure the legal stamp to blow up an Aboriginal Sacred Site with 60,000 years of habitation (discovered by recent archaeological digs) in order to get at $130M worth of iron ore. It only got a second look because news got out and people were rightly pissed off. Don't let the independence thing fool you, this place is still heavy on its colonial practices, and British Colonialism was closely tied to corporatism, list to follow as evidence (state-sponsored private corporations).

1407 Company of Merchant Adventurers of London
1552 Bristol Society of Merchant Venturers
1553 Company of Merchant Adventurers to New Lands
1555 Muscovy Company
1577 Spanish Company
1579 Eastland Company
1581 Turkey Company
1583 Venice Company
1585 Barbary Company
1592 Levant Company[note 1]
1600 East India Company[note 2]
1606 Virginia Company
1606 Plymouth Company
1609 French Company
1610 London and Bristol Company
1616 Somers Isles Company
1618 Guinea Company
1619 New River Company
1629 Massachusetts Bay Company
1629 Providence Island Company
1635 Courteen association
1664–1674 Royal West Indian Company
1670 Hudson's Bay Company
1672 Royal African Company
1691 Hollow Sword Blade Company
1693 Greenland Company
1711 South Sea Company
1752 African Company of Merchants (abolished 1821)
1792 Sierra Leone Company
1824 Van Diemen's Land Company
1825 New Zealand Company
1835 South Australian Company
1840 Fiji Company
1847 Eastern Archipelago Company
1881 British North Borneo Company
1886 Royal Niger Company
1888 Imperial British East Africa Company
1889 British South Africa Company

>>45801
Also RE: Australian Education Sysyem.
Shit is super class-based. Public schools aren't necessarily bad but there's a definite hierarchy in prestige (and thus enrolments and funding), which since they operate on a catchment system where they only accept a certain number of students from outside their catchment each year, makes the property prices soar around prestigious catchments, which means even if a good school was in a poorer area, the poorer people would get inched out by richer people looking for guarnateed ins for the better school. It even made some idiots mad when they started reshuffling some catchments because they 'invested' in their property being in said catchment.

Also, private school is generally a safer bet in a lot of places compared to public. There are two kinds of private school. Private School in upper cases and private school in lower. The latter is what I went to. Our local publics were terrible. Bad funding, lots of drugs and shit, so we got put in the Catholic private school despite not being a particularly religious family. They're more expensive than going public but you're typically getting better teachers due to better pay rates and crap.

The former, Public Schools in upper case are the aristocratic holdout schools that cost tens of thousands of dollars a year and are almost exclusively boarding schools for one gender. They're also very backwards in school culture (lots of really bad hazing bullshit) but churn out the elites as much through connections with other kids of elites as through the best teachers money can buy. I worked with a guy who did part time cricket coaching for one, and they had a fucking bat craftsman whose only job was to hand-craft custom cricket bats for their First XI. Pic related is the uniform of one of our more infamously elite Private Schools.

The TLDR is that our entire system is already economically stratified and made into a commodity. Adding brand names to the curriculum is really the natural development of things when it's this way.

>>45811
Didn't know it was that bad down were you live. The German education system does not escape running along class lines but afaik private corps are not that deeply involved if at all, I guess they might try to get a foot in the door. I only remember my old history teacher telling us that back then schools were also on the list of possible privatizations but it didn't happen.

https://www.si.com/college/2020/08/20/barry-wesley-colorado-state-antifa-daily-cover?utm_source=pocket-newtab

>>45823

> antiafa

Like you guys does not already have enough of pretend enemies. Why are you so obsessed with them?

At least they guy got arrested so a bit of sanity there.

>>45824
It's basically being fueled by a WH psyop because after the total clusterfuck that was I guess the last 4 years generally but the past several months specificaply which turned the country into one big dumpster fire so they're trying to create some kind of fake internal enemy and distraction from the complete miserable failure that they led us towards.

What I found particularly interesting though is that Trump gave a speech where he specifically talked about the country being filled with lawlessness, chaos and violence if Biden wins. If you're not a retard and you've been tracking this, Trump tends to project pretty hard to the extent that it's often pretty easy to anticipate his moves by watching what he accuses others of doing, and that has also lately included him trying to fuck us out of timely delivery of our mail by repeatedly saying "we may never even know who really won" "this election will be filled with the worst voter fraud in history."

So basically I think his plan at this point to keep himself and his family out of jail and/or bankruptcy in 2021 is to commit the worst voter suppression and outright fraud in history and if he loses trying to whip up us many of these retards as possible into a violent rampaging frenzy throughout the country as he contests the election. He'll probably do it partly through Q tards which is a psyop shilling operation run by Kushner and/or his son Eric. At least one of his kids is a poltard too iirc so theyre trying to leverage the media they control.

I do mean jail btw. Bannon just got arrested for massive fraud. If you get out of the red team/blue team retardation it's abundantly evident that Trump is in it solely for himself and possibly his kids by extension and that he's spent the last 4 years trying to insulate themselves. That all goes away the moment he's kicked out of the WH if that happens which means a new attorney general, new Department of Labor and thus human trafficking ministers, new ministers of the DoJ and FBI, new people running the IRS. Of course Biden is just like the rest and is basically indistinguishable from any other Republican or Democrat but screeching hysterically is their entire strategy new and has been since the BLM protests by saying they're "law and order" partei which basically means pandering to people like that guy.

It's also all strategic because imho he's trying to keep the cops, military, and evangelicals on his side after burning, betraying, and pissing off virtually everyone else including fiscal conservatives, libertarians, wide swaths of the officer corps, wide swaths of intelligence community, basically everyone not a Q tard, cop, Evangelical, Saudi royal, or Jewish banker is fed up with him at this point.

The other thing than the

>you have no civil rights

abject hatred of freedom people like him display to the extent I can hardly even consider him anything but an enemy combatant and no longer an American at that point is the sad fact that you guys are probably going to have to put up with something there because whatever we do here often seems to end up some kind of blowback in Europe.

It should be interesting to see what plays EU makes while America is descending into total chaos with the Belarus happenings on their outskirts now getting vaguely linked up with the Baltics although the overwhelming impression I get is EU in general already turned their backs on us and are trying to go their own way. Even still, I have no idea the impact this will have on your far right parties.

>>45826
Well bannon was in Italy trying to set up some SS gladiator school in an old monastery. Anyone who isn't embarrassed by that is beyond help. Our right wing parties has more then enough help from Russia with training and such.

I hope EU can keep it together because like it or not, we are in for an major ass pounding if it can't. And we won't recover from it. No matter what the nationalist say when they wave their flags in an overly patriotic way, we will never recover, it is game over.

>>45824
The establishment needs an internal, vaguely defined enemy, and with the lockdowns the "foreign terrorists" script looks less credible. Also some of the actual antifa get off on being the "resistance" and so news coverage/presidential condemnation lets them live out their fantasy.
It's a cycle of attention feeding/whoring.

>>45818
Tbh, Australia is actually a really grim place that just looks nice because it's always sunny. Scratch around a bit and you discover gross human rights violations, environmental destruction and religious/corporate favouritism are all quite abundant. The mining incident I talked about above isn't even isolated. This for example got approved https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmichael_coal_mine

The short of that one is that the mining lobby managed to not only get a project approved which tramples native land rights, threatens the Great Barrier Reef, the local Water Table with both underground collapses and contamination, destruction of environments for native animals, including the Southern Black-Throated Finch which is extinct in NSW and has vanished from 80% of its range in Queensland, and in decline. Plus levelling endangered native woodland. Their plan for the finches for example was (and I quote their actual documentation here)

>To ensure the finch is protected during construction and operation, clearing will occur gradually to allow the finches to move away from mining activities and towards the conservation area.

https://www.adaniaustralia.com/-/media/ADI0027_Black-throated-Finch_v11_WEB.pdf

In other words, they will make no real effort to protect the environment. They'll just destroy it slowly so that the birds wise up and get out of dodge before they get run over by a bulldozer.

The payoff? 60 years worth of mining that's only really digging up low-quality coal which is inefficient for any use, but also particularly bad for the environment, even compared to regular coal. The effective yearly CO2 output of that mine alone is also probably going to be higher than some countries' yearly emissions and even with even that better quality stuff not really being in high demand right now. Even better? The government both federal and state have proposed subsidising the damn thing. The mine itself is also creating less than 2000 jobs at best.

This place is owned by the companies man. It's so fucked up once you start digging.

>mfw Orbánism is actually turning into an ideology

During the August 20th celebrations, he gave a speech where he essentially outlined the "Seven laws of National Politics", as a way to formally end the "100 year long Post-Trianon isolation". "After a hundred years, we understood: Hungary can never again afford the luxury of being weak"

These laws for the 21st century are as follows:

1. The Homeland exist as long as there's someone left who loves it
2. Every Hungarian child is a new watch-post
3. Truth is worth little without strength
4. Only that remains ours, which we can defend

5 Every match lasts until we win it
6. A country has borders, a nation doesn't
7. No Hungarian is alone

He also said that We stand as the champions of survival on the stage of Europe and that , with its flag hoisted high once more, great times and victories await Hungary.

>>45841
Man, is 2021 going to be the year of the Great Hungarian War? Can we just have one year without some shortest kicking off?

Really though, that is some concerning rhetoric.

>>45867
Not yet.
Currently we spend around 1.3% of the GDP on military, up from around 1% in the late 2000s. (And they plan on getting it up to the NATO-recommended 2% by the end of the decade)
The extra money is being spent as part of the Zrínyi 2026 project.
This includes buying top of the line tanks and artillery from Germany, rocket systems from the US, and restarting domestic small-arms manufacturing based on Czech licences and also IFV production based on German licences.

The only thing we haven't replaced yet are the Gripen's we bought from Sweden like 15 years ago, though those are afaik very run down too.
(When they were unveiled to the public, the minister giving a speech was drunk and had serious trouble talking.)

>>45868

>When they were unveiled to the public, the minister giving a speech was drunk and had serious trouble talking

Ebig.

In USA shit started again?

>>45896
My dear Blyadovich, it never ended. Which shit? It took me a minute to try and figure out what you could possibly be talking about. You probably mean rioting? Pfft it's nothing major. I wouldn't doubt that certain people who are losing badly in every poll might try and amplify reporting on it in such a way that for whatever reason you guys get a really warped image because you probably don't hear about the rest of our news. The economy is still doing poorly, coronachan is still absolutely everywhere, a lot of the country is freaked out about sending their kids back to school because of the previous point, and the two big stories that have been dominating our discussions all week have been the XXTRA Large California fires and the Bigass Doubleburger hurricanes, one of which just slammed into Texas and Loisianna. Hey I wonder how bad it is right now...

>the first story in my feed whan looking it up

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/08/27/hurricane-laura-takes-down-lake-charles-confederate-monument/5646691002/
lol

Oh psssht it doesn't look that bad
https://www.foxnews.com/us/hurricane-laura-louisiana-landfall-lake-charles-damage-storm-threat-tornado

>>45896
Yeah, it has.
Short version: police in Wiconsin shoot an African American man 7 times in the back, protests/riots follow, a group of armed citizens show up and offer to help the police, one of those citizens ends up killing two people.
Oh, Wisconsin is also an important State in the presidential election, which is going to add more fuel to the fire as both sides try to use these events to their advantage.

>>45903
Why are the armed citizen helping the police?
Isn't the guns for protecting yourself against the big bad communist state that will force you to become vegan and vote Obama?

>>45901
Ayy lmao. Someone should try and hijack the Bible Belt into saying it's a sign from Gerd.

>>45907

>Why are the armed citizen helping the police?

In some cities the police have been standing back and allowing the protests to play out-that is they turn into low grade riots, burn a few buildings and such-because to confront the mass of people with State force risks escalating the situation and creating even more violence. This doesn't sit well with some folks at home, so in this case they decided to go and protect neighborhoods themselves. The way I see it, these people have been propagandized into believing there is a civil war going on, and decided to jump in as the cavalry. A bad decision which comes with no upside, and a downside that includes life in prison.

>“Any patriots willing to take up arms and defend out [sic] City tonight from the evil thugs? Nondoubt [sic] they are currently planning on the next part of the City to burn tonight!”
>"we don’t need the government’s permission. We don’t need to be told — we can do it. In fact, the Constitution tells us we can do it. And the Second Amendment was put in there for instances like this — when we’re at war and under siege.”

A ‘call to arms’ that filled Kenosha with combat weapons
https://wisconsinexaminer.com/2020/08/27/a-call-to-arms-that-filled-kenosha-with-combat-weapons

tldr: Some people watch too much Fox News/OANN

>>45911

> This site not available in your country

I'm guessing they are lucky that the guy who shot got caught and that he is a retard. Best case they get arrested. Worst case someone takes revenge for hundreds of years of slavery and then it will be interesting times ahead.

>>45907
Another 17 year old poltard took his LARPing too far and shot a couple of people. It was the same situation as the fucktard who came at people with a kukri or gladius or whatever it was and ended up getting the shit beaten out of him.

Wisconsin happenings are not totally irrelevant but it's basically irrelevant to the country. Like I said, I'd imagine that foreign news networks are picking up on the insane memeing and manipulation of info here and then further manipulating that information to make it appear all of America is burning to the ground. I would particularly expect that to be the case in Russia.

Meanwhile in reality yet another shootening by the pigs of an unarmed man and/or man with his back turned to them/some child or guy in hotel hallway, people naturally got butthurt except black people are the only ones not retarded kcmods when it comes to police because of added race issues, a bunch of other tards join in who just want to destroy shit, an unpopular and failed presidency decides to play coverage of it 24/7 because they literally have zero actual policy platforms to offer the public besides fear mongering and blatant lies.

In reality that's a backwater non-happening. Also in reality California is literally burning to the fucking ground and we lost our redwoods along with hundreds or thousands of peoples homes thanks to wildfires and many thousands more homes just got destroyed in Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas.

If RT wanted to publish the real shit about America destroying itself they'd show the rows and rows of freezer trucks for housing all the corpses of dead Americans because our morgues are still full in the South. Channel 1 RT etc or whatever they are called do not do this because Putin is also a retarded faggot who in fact did not learn to manage better because they sent all their budget for freezer trucks overseas along with Russians' pensions. But hey, at least Putler can lie and say he has a vaccine while our retard decides to spend all month talking about a burned car dealership while the majority of the country is suffering literal plagues.

tl;dr coronavirus can someday have a vaccine but fatnikism is incurable and our countries are retarded the end

>>45911
Fuck

>literal biblical plagues

>>45908
I am no joke literally interpreting things that way right now. God is wrecking our shit because we turned into a country of assholes who hate freedom.Yes I am aware of the irony of thinking that after bemoaning fatnikism but you know what it literally is a sign from God and I'm going with the allegedly Catholic guy who decided to start talking about serving The Light in soite of the fact he's really just a more competent representative of our same uniparty system in two different retarded flavors

>>45914
Tbh, a massive amount of the problems with fundies would dissipate if they weren't so damn reactionary. I'd have a lot less of an issue with them if they weren't trying to jack shit up for everyone else all the time. Decoupling the Southern thumper from Lost Cause bullshit would be a good start in that direction, so your sentiment makes sense.

Dog, the 21st century has been disappointing with its trend towards regression though. Please don't tell me that it's going to take another huge bloodletting to radicalise people towards progress again. That'd be some real bullshit.

>>45915
Finite lifespans renders human history as cyclically predictable as the weather patterns. "There is nothing new under the sun" as the saying in Scripture goes, or the bit in Ephesians about a time to kill, a time to die, a time to love, a time to hate. I will say though that these are some real faggy generations and at least people in the late gen X to early millenials were actually interested in things like tech and hacking and how things work. I get the feeling that the bulk of 20 year olds are about as useless as flappers and beatniks at their best. What's worse is knowing how history will record it.

The only thing that has ever changed over a short enough span of time is technology and you know full well that if we made a human-to machine elf aether interface in the early to mid 29th century all people would do with it is try to find a way to fuck the machine elves and spirits of the dead with a materialized hologram Ghost Dick version 4.3

>>45912

>Worst case someone takes revenge for hundreds of years of slavery

That is also completely retarded btw. Burning down your own city is completely moronic. I however am not fully convinced that some of these arsons aren't being done by undercovers also. It's not like they haven't literally firebombed cities from planes before
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/10/move-1985-bombing-reconciliation-philadelphia
That was 1985 dude. Not, "oh it was just more 1960s strife" it was literally 1985.

My city also had BLM protests btw and contrary to my expectations no one acted like complete retards and the cops stood around engaging in dialogue with the BLM protesters and took a knee at one point. Meanwhile certain people were trying to spread rumors here that "thugs" had been looting the place and set the local Walmart on fire--no such thing ever happened.

It's also interesting to note that the overwhelming majority of the violence happening right now in Wisconsin and in the past nationwide BLM protests had been cops against citizens the overwhelming majority of whom had been nonviolent and it was often a deliberate attempt to provoke them into violence.

That article is just talking about another retard facebook page that tried to mobilize thousands of "militia members" aka the boomer equivalent of LARPing poltards who get together to drink once in awhile descending on the city carrying things like ARs. The fact they see everyone not them as a "thug" "criminal" "terrorist" etc shows where these people stand. It wouldn't be as big a problem were it not the fact that like I said a certain retard collection in power right now is trying to find an internal distraction and scapegoat from their overwhelmingly miserable failure on the pandemic response and the national economy. These people won't vote for them anyway so they're all "criminals" and "terrorists" now but like I said, I suspect a few retards actually aren't cops also and don't even care about BLM or race or anything and just want to destroy shit.

>>45924
Tbh, flappers and beatniks are the cure. People who don't give a shit what traditional society expects of them. The good does not necessarily equate to the responsible. The latter is too tied to the existing power structures to ever be truly revolutionary or progressive.

>>45930
They were better than these camwhoring kids true but the same people are like all those lukewarm grunge kids who ended up trying to sell me furniture from Ikea. You cannot foment rebellion via apathy. In fact the overall disengagement and apathy of the bulk of my countrymen is one of the most substantial reasons everything has been going to shit here for decades now. I'm obviously not implying that either BLM or idpol SJWs are anything but a bunch of the other same faggots getting up at 4:00am to wait in line for the latest iShit version. You're right they already all bought into the system and maybe not BLM as much but they sold their souls long ago and their "resistance" is as fucking laughable as alt tards, all of whom are merely whining about the identity political favoritism that the super system has been manipulating them into complaining about rather than the root causes afflicting everybody.

I will say though that black folks tend to be much less retarded on these issues generally, probably because they've been historically disenfranchised the most and hence have most cause to be suspicious and butthurt at everything. Contrast this to Karens whose sole grievances are asking for the manager because she found a single coffee ground in her frappacino and calling the realtor because one of your flower pots is light blue rather than the standardized shade of green.

Honestly the funniest fucking thing to me is even by far right standards we're talking about the kinds of guys who can literally quote the Protocols of Zion verbatim, which I likewise suspect to be symptomatic of the fact a number of them had to put up with inner city Jewish Orthodox slumlords. This is probably also part of why the system hates them with such a fervent passion and has gone to greater lengths to victimize and destroy the black community than anybody else because they have the least reason or impulse to buy into the system. When you look at just the evolution of hiphop and the destruction of it both thematically and as a genre as a whole this becomes even more evident, with it going from the wokest most muh redpilled shit you could find anywhere to being soulless mumble rap and paens to the system "git money, fuk dem hoes, sell drugs, imma gangsya worship money yeeee" in the span of two decades.

You cannot oppose the system through apathy. Moreover you cannot oppose the system through sheer rejection of its values but forcing the embrace of an alternative through your own. You can be an apathetic NEET who disengages from the world all you want but you'll never offer an alternative pathway through your own and you'll ever change anything, just move yourself out of their way through the path of least resistance.

>>45930

>People who don't give a shit what traditional society expects of them.

We tried that in the 60s and 70s. People (that is, the hippy generation themselves) quickly rejected it and created Reaganism, which is like the old order of the 1950s if you took out every last vestige of social responsibility among the elite.

>The good does not necessarily equate to the responsible.

The responsible, at least, don't burn their own country down, or let tons of retrograde Muslims in because it would be racist to do otherwise. You can't maintain the good without a deep level of cultural conservatism, otherwise you get people trying to upend even the good parts of your culture because "lol don't trust anyone over 30 xDDD".

>The latter is too tied to the existing power structures to ever be truly revolutionary or progressive.

I hate to sound like a fag, but domestic revolution is always a bad idea, it always makes everything worse, and it always fucks over poor people in particular. The richers will just flee to New Zealand. "Revolution" in the present American context will mean either "antiracist" totalitarianism (shut up and take the dick from Amazon, or that Facebook post in support of Taco Tuesday will mean you never work again) or racist totalitarianism (shut up and die because you're black).

>>45947

>in the present American context

Honestly I think both outcomes might end up more similar than not, considering the US's weird racial history. Corporations will back whatever will yield profit or whoever is "winning" anyway.
Also it's a bit understated how racist a lot of black people are, and not just in a "fuck whitey" sense. Part of is regular ignorance, but some of them have some weird ideological bent.