Politics & Stuff

[Fulham Broadway 16,838]

13 minutes ago, Atomiswave said:

Question is how is this allowed,

I think the meat and dairy lobby is very powerful. It is generally rich landowners, who obviously get richer on the arrangement,  but the amount of land needed to feed these animals is monster.

British farmers depend greatly on EU subsidies, the present government have promised to equal these though problems could get worse. eg growth promoters and present hormone injections such as oestradiol 17ß, testosterone, progesterone, zeranol, trenbolone acetate and melengestrol acetate (MGA) are all banned by the EU. These will be legal in the UK on Jan 1st

[lucio 5,418]

British landowners are often very stubborn,  they block the reintroduction of the lynx because they are too lazy to protect their sheep. The British isles are so devoid of forests because of overgrazing and not enough hunting of deer/no big predators. Ireland in particular is basically a green desert at this point 

[robsblubot 3,502]

I find it funny to be honest, when I discuss global warming with religious folks which are encouraged to have kids.

Some drive a prius and have 4 kids... While I am not one to judge personal choices, I find it a bit hypocritical to preach about global warming when you are increasing the world's carbon footprint by a lot.

I usually end the discussion by asking what the end game strategy might be? cover the earth with people and shit?

And how about jobs? The jobs are going away... not because of immigrants lol, but automation and AI.

The answer of course is, we don't have one (end game strategy).

[lucio 5,418]

1 hour ago, robsblubot said:

I find it funny to be honest, when I discuss global warming with religious folks which are encouraged to have kids.

Some drive a prius and have 4 kids... While I am not one to judge personal choices, I find it a bit hypocritical to preach about global warming when you are increasing the world's carbon footprint by a lot.

I usually end the discussion by asking what the end game strategy might be? cover the earth with people and shit?

And how about jobs? The jobs are going away... not because of immigrants lol, but automation and AI.

The answer of course is, we don't have one (end game strategy).

Why save the earth for other peoples kids? Choosing to end your own bloodline because of climate issues is maladaption and goes against human nature. Also, if you pursue a life of self sufficiency, it's better to pass these skills on to the next generation (my plan at least ), otherwise the world will be inherited by people who dont care about nature as much 

[killer1257 3,282]

I find it funny to be honest, when I discuss global warming with religious folks which are encouraged to have kids.
Some drive a prius and have 4 kids... While I am not one to judge personal choices, I find it a bit hypocritical to preach about global warming when you are increasing the world's carbon footprint by a lot.
I usually end the discussion by asking what the end game strategy might be? cover the earth with people and shit?
And how about jobs? The jobs are going away... not because of immigrants lol, but automation and AI.
The answer of course is, we don't have one (end game strategy).

Getting rid of factory farming would be much more efficient

Gesendet von meinem VOG-L29 mit Tapatalk

[robsblubot 3,502]

40 minutes ago, killer1257 said:

Getting rid of factory farming would be much more efficient

Gesendet von meinem VOG-L29 mit Tapatalk
 

yes, but still not enough.

Don't think folks realize how many jobs will go away... some manufacturing jobs are gone forever despite what "they" say. Some will go very soon (as soon as the litigation around AI/automation is sorted out). Not many jobs are going to be immune to AI and automation... even IT jobs will be affected at some point - just much later.

[robsblubot 3,502]

On 11/25/2020 at 1:27 PM, lucio said:

Why save the earth for other peoples kids? Choosing to end your own bloodline because of climate issues is maladaption and goes against human nature. Also, if you pursue a life of self sufficiency, it's better to pass these skills on to the next generation (my plan at least ), otherwise the world will be inherited by people who dont care about nature as much 

I'm selfless enough to want to save the world for other people's kids. Being human means being able to resist nature, the very instincts that define the behavior of all the animals we descend from. We have no kids and it's entirely by choice btw.

Again, I'm not talking about individual choices and circumstances, but macro scale. What governments and religions encourage via messaging and money. Tax breaks provide strong incentives to having kids in the USA for example, which is something the democrats do while at the same time spouting rhetoric on global warming. That really really does not work in my head - it simply does not compute. And I vote democrat every time because they always win by elimination... the GOP is just wrong atm.

Once someone said that given time and effort humanity is able to circumvent anything. That is a cute, but we don't control time at all. We don't even really know what time is.

For example, to explore the cosmos we'd need a breakthrough. Without it, earth will go to the gutter way before we would be able to pull resources from other planets. Animals will go extinct if our cities keep growing... where would they go? There is simple no end game plan here and certainly not a global one.

Yes, population is a sore subject esp because communist countries tackled that in the past, but it's one that needs to be on the table if you are serious about preserving the planet (however you may feel about how imminent a problem global warming is). It could be something as simple as tax incentives, for ex.

sorry for the DP. Please see the jobs issue above.... also a sore subject for all parties and affiliations. 

[Vesper 28,787]

Trump declares Twitter national security threat after #DiaperDon trends following meltdown at miniature table

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-election-2020/trump-twitter-diaperdon-election-press-conference-b1762682.html

Donald Trump has angrily declared Twitter a national security threat after #DiaperDon went viral following a news conference in which he repeatedly complained about perceived injustices.

“Twitter is sending out totally false ‘Trends’ that have absolutely nothing to do with what is really trending in the world. They make it up, and only negative ‘stuff’,” the US president tweeted without providing evidence in the early hours of Friday morning.

Mr Trump did not say which trending topic upset him, but following Thursday’s press briefing, which saw him furiously assail a reporter from behind a surprisingly small desk, the hashtag #DiaperDon surged towards the top of Twitter’s trending list in the US and UK.

“For purposes of National Security, Section 230 must be immediately terminated!!!” Mr Trump added, in reference to part of a 1996 law which protects websites from lawsuits over content posted by users. Any changes to these protections would fundamentally change how the internet works.

MeidasTouch, an anti-Trump political action committee, took credit for the initial use of the hashtag on Friday morning.

 

[Vesper 28,787]

[Vesper 28,787]

France is dealing with some controversy. 

 

THE BACKGROUND. 

Last week, French lawmakers said ‘oui’ to a little thing called the Global Security Bill. Includes a section that would expand the ability of security forces to film everyday people via bodycams and drones...without their consent. Also includes a section (Article 24) that would make it illegal for those same everyday people to publish photos or videos that could possibly identify police officers. So, yeah. Cue protests. 

 

THE HAPPENINGS. 

People took to the streets all over France to speak out against the bill, which many said would make it harder to hold police officers accountable and would cut back on free speech. The protests also came in the wake of multiple cases of police violence. Enter: French Prez Emmanuel Macron. Yesterday, his ruling party pinky promised to make some changes to the Global Security Bill. 

 

THE REACTION. 

Hesitant. It’s not yet clear what those changes will look like, since all anyone’s really said about them is that they’ll involve a “complete new wording” of Article 24. That means that Article 24 will still stick around in some form - and lawmakers seem pretty committed to the idea of “protecting police forces,” so don’t expect it to change too much. Regardless of the changes, the bill isn’t law yet. First, it needs to get the thumbs-up from another set of lawmakers. 

 

THE TAKE. 

All of this comes at a time when everyone is talking about police brutality. 

[Fulham Broadway 16,838]

On 29/11/2020 at 10:42 PM, Vesper said:

Begging in other words....

Meanwhile patient dumping at night is very common in the US

"Patient dumping" outside hospitals caught on tape - YouTube

[Vesper 28,787]

An Internet Meme Mocked Trump, So He's Trying To Defund The Military "Diaper Don" is trending on Twitter, and the president really does not like it. WASHINGTON, DC -- You might’ve heard that one of the reasons why Donald Trump received 10 million more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016 was because of the “defund the police” slogan that emerged following the brutal murder of George Floyd last Summer. It’s not the only reason, but it’s one that’s floated to the surface.  Regardless of how you might feel about the slogan -- I happen to think “defund” was the wrong word -- it looks like Trump picked up some votes because of it. I guess it spooked some “law and order” voters. Nevertheless, it’s particularly ludicrous because the Joe Biden campaign and the Democratic Party distanced themselves from it. Yet Trump spent the entire Summer tagging Biden with the slogan despite the truth, despite reality. It’s ironic because as I write this, Trump is threatening to veto the latest defense spending bill in order to strong-arm Congress into repealing Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. In other words, Trump is literally trying to defund the military -- veterans, too. He’s doing it right now. It’s Trump himself -- not a random activist, not Red Hat Twitter, it’s all him. And he’s doing it while soldiers are deployed in war zones. The voters who stupidly cast their ballots for Trump because they worried Joe Biden might defund the police just happened to have voted for a candidate who wants to defund the entire military, including programs for veterans. Once again, American Idiocracy marches on. In case you’re unfamiliar with the law, Section 230 protects online platforms like Twitter and Facebook from being sued for hosting offensive third-party content. Put another way: because of Section 230, I can’t sue Twitter because of Trump’s tweets. It also protects online platforms from being sued by someone whose account or posts were removed. It’s the latter protection that -- I think -- Trump’s pissed about. He and his disciples believe Trumpers are being unfairly targeted by the social media platforms, suggesting their posts are being removed because of political bias. The truth is: their posts are being tagged with warnings or removed entirely because they’re spreading disinformation about the election and the COVID pandemic. The ironic thing is that by repealing Section 230, it’s possible that the social media platforms would be more inclined to completely ban controversial users like Trump because they won’t want to be sued for defamation, harassment or myriad other reasons. He could also sue these companies for banning him, too. From what I know about the law, it seems like they’d be stuck in an impossible situation that could entirely change the way social media platforms are developed and used. And probably not for the better.  Furthermore, Internet Association president Jon Berroya said, “Repealing Section 230 is itself a threat to national security.” He added, “The law empowers online platforms to remove harmful and dangerous content, including terrorist content and misinformation.” And by the way, 230 was recently amended to specifically target sex traffickers. Naturally, Trump doesn’t give a flying rip about terrorism or hate speech or sex trafficking or anything beyond his own frail, wafer-thin ego. He’s definitely not interested in national security, at least when it comes to his ridiculous move to repeal this thing. No, there was one specific event that set him off this time. It wasn’t just a random threat aimed at disrupting the defense bill. Last Thursday, Trump held an event in the White House in which he was inexplicably seated behind a tiny wooden table -- an almost cartoonishly small piece of furniture making Trump look like Will Ferrell in the movie “Elf” seated behind a minuscule elf-sized desk.  One of the photos of Trump revealed his rather large ass, too, so Twitter users quickly capitalized on the rumors by a former The Apprentice staffer named Noel Casler who has repeatedly accused Trump of requiring adult diapers due to his alleged drug abuse. So, because of the photos, the hashtag “Diaper Don” began to circulate to the point where it reached Twitter’s list of trending items. And, oh happy day, Trump must’ve seen the hashtag because he tweeted: Twitter is sending out totally false “Trends” that have absolutely nothing to do with what is really trending in the world. They make it up, and only negative “stuff”. Same thing will happen to Twitter as is happening to @FoxNews daytime. Also, big Conservative discrimination! I live for crap like this. Knowing that he knows that we know he wears a diaper is one of my favorite things ever. I like to think that whenever a bully is humiliated an angel gets its wings. It appears as though Trump is defunding the military and veterans because of the “Diaper Don” hashtag. He’s crippling the military, who he believes is composed of “suckers and losers,” because Twitter users talked about his alleged diapers. Now, to be clear, I have no idea whether he wears a diaper. But it’s endlessly hilarious to me to think about what went through his worm-infested head when he saw the hashtag.  All told, it’s unlikely the defense bill will be blocked. Even nutbag Republican senators like Jim Inhofe are wondering why Trump is linking Section 230 to the defense bill since it has little to do with the Pentagon. But maybe Inhofe should check out the Diaper Don hashtag. It’ll make more sense that way.

[Vesper 28,787]

Adolf Hitler Wins Election in Namibia, Has No Plans for World Domination

https://www.newsweek.com/adolf-hitler-germany-namibia-elections-1552056

A politician named Adolf Hitler has won a regional election in Namibia.

Adolf Hitler Uunona has been elected with 85 percent of the vote for a seat on the regional council in the former German colony, where street names, people and places still have German names. However, Adolf Uunona as he prefers himself to be known, says he wants to assure people that he has no plans for world domination.

He told German tabloid paper Bild: "My father named me after this man. He probably didn't understand what Adolf Hitler stood for. As a child I saw it as a totally normal name. Only as a teenager did I understand that this man wanted to conquer the whole world."

He appears on the election nomination list as Adolf H. Uunona. He won the seat on the ticket of the ruling SWAPO party which has ruled Namibia since independence from apartheid South Africa in 1990. He also said that while his wife calls him Adolf, it would be too late for him to change his name officially.

"The fact I have this name does not mean I want to conquer Oshana," he said, referring to the region where he won the election. It doesn't mean I'm striving for world domination."

He is actually not new to politics, having been a regional councilor for a while, praising a cement company in 2019 for investing more than $1m by sending employees to Germany for training, offering internships and job attachments. He has been a regional councilor for at least 15 years, Namibian electoral records seen by Newsweek show.

Namibia was a German colony from 1884, however following the First World War the League of Nations mandated South Africa to administer the territory.

Earlier in 2020, Namibia rejected Germany's offer of compensation for the mass murder of tens of thousands of indigenous people more than a century ago. Between 1904 and 1908 German occupiers almost destroyed the Herero and Nama peoples in what was then known as the colony of German Southwest Africa.

[robsblubot 3,502]

On 12/3/2020 at 8:42 PM, Vesper said:

An Internet Meme Mocked Trump, So He's Trying To Defund The Military "Diaper Don" is trending on Twitter, and the president really does not like it. WASHINGTON, DC -- You might’ve heard that one of the reasons why Donald Trump received 10 million more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016 was because of the “defund the police” slogan that emerged following the brutal murder of George Floyd last Summer. It’s not the only reason, but it’s one that’s floated to the surface.  Regardless of how you might feel about the slogan -- I happen to think “defund” was the wrong word -- it looks like Trump picked up some votes because of it. I guess it spooked some “law and order” voters. Nevertheless, it’s particularly ludicrous because the Joe Biden campaign and the Democratic Party distanced themselves from it. Yet Trump spent the entire Summer tagging Biden with the slogan despite the truth, despite reality. It’s ironic because as I write this, Trump is threatening to veto the latest defense spending bill in order to strong-arm Congress into repealing Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. In other words, Trump is literally trying to defund the military -- veterans, too. He’s doing it right now. It’s Trump himself -- not a random activist, not Red Hat Twitter, it’s all him. And he’s doing it while soldiers are deployed in war zones. The voters who stupidly cast their ballots for Trump because they worried Joe Biden might defund the police just happened to have voted for a candidate who wants to defund the entire military, including programs for veterans. Once again, American Idiocracy marches on. In case you’re unfamiliar with the law, Section 230 protects online platforms like Twitter and Facebook from being sued for hosting offensive third-party content. Put another way: because of Section 230, I can’t sue Twitter because of Trump’s tweets. It also protects online platforms from being sued by someone whose account or posts were removed. It’s the latter protection that -- I think -- Trump’s pissed about. He and his disciples believe Trumpers are being unfairly targeted by the social media platforms, suggesting their posts are being removed because of political bias. The truth is: their posts are being tagged with warnings or removed entirely because they’re spreading disinformation about the election and the COVID pandemic. The ironic thing is that by repealing Section 230, it’s possible that the social media platforms would be more inclined to completely ban controversial users like Trump because they won’t want to be sued for defamation, harassment or myriad other reasons. He could also sue these companies for banning him, too. From what I know about the law, it seems like they’d be stuck in an impossible situation that could entirely change the way social media platforms are developed and used. And probably not for the better.  Furthermore, Internet Association president Jon Berroya said, “Repealing Section 230 is itself a threat to national security.” He added, “The law empowers online platforms to remove harmful and dangerous content, including terrorist content and misinformation.” And by the way, 230 was recently amended to specifically target sex traffickers. Naturally, Trump doesn’t give a flying rip about terrorism or hate speech or sex trafficking or anything beyond his own frail, wafer-thin ego. He’s definitely not interested in national security, at least when it comes to his ridiculous move to repeal this thing. No, there was one specific event that set him off this time. It wasn’t just a random threat aimed at disrupting the defense bill. Last Thursday, Trump held an event in the White House in which he was inexplicably seated behind a tiny wooden table -- an almost cartoonishly small piece of furniture making Trump look like Will Ferrell in the movie “Elf” seated behind a minuscule elf-sized desk.  One of the photos of Trump revealed his rather large ass, too, so Twitter users quickly capitalized on the rumors by a former The Apprentice staffer named Noel Casler who has repeatedly accused Trump of requiring adult diapers due to his alleged drug abuse. So, because of the photos, the hashtag “Diaper Don” began to circulate to the point where it reached Twitter’s list of trending items. And, oh happy day, Trump must’ve seen the hashtag because he tweeted: Twitter is sending out totally false “Trends” that have absolutely nothing to do with what is really trending in the world. They make it up, and only negative “stuff”. Same thing will happen to Twitter as is happening to @FoxNews daytime. Also, big Conservative discrimination! I live for crap like this. Knowing that he knows that we know he wears a diaper is one of my favorite things ever. I like to think that whenever a bully is humiliated an angel gets its wings. It appears as though Trump is defunding the military and veterans because of the “Diaper Don” hashtag. He’s crippling the military, who he believes is composed of “suckers and losers,” because Twitter users talked about his alleged diapers. Now, to be clear, I have no idea whether he wears a diaper. But it’s endlessly hilarious to me to think about what went through his worm-infested head when he saw the hashtag.  All told, it’s unlikely the defense bill will be blocked. Even nutbag Republican senators like Jim Inhofe are wondering why Trump is linking Section 230 to the defense bill since it has little to do with the Pentagon. But maybe Inhofe should check out the Diaper Don hashtag. It’ll make more sense that way.

and I must say also a lousy tennis player - grew up playing tennis and I can tell by his "form." (does not take much lol)

[11Drogba 2,000]

Losing the 2020 Presidential election, Trump threatened to “take it to the Supreme Court,” but tonight he found out that the Supreme Court is not some kind of walk-up bank teller.

[Vesper 28,787]

Brexit: Boris Johnson and EU agree one last chance for a deal by Sunday

The talks came as Britain’s biggest supermarkets were revealed to be stockpiling food amid fears that Mr Johnson will fail to strike a post-Brexit trade deal

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/breaking-brexit-boris-johnson-eu-23141960#source=breaking-news

[Vesper 28,787]

Brexit and the misunderstanding of sovereignty

https://www.socialeurope.eu/brexit-and-the-misunderstanding-of-sovereignty

While the negotiators haggle over a deal to avoid a new-year car crash, the fundamental problem is the obsolete notion of sovereignty held in London.

Twenty-twenty has been a difficult year by any measure. While the impacts of the coronavirus and the blockage of the European Union’s rescue package by Hungary, Poland and Slovenia over protection of the rule of law have dominated the headlines, the issue that will likely have the most lasting effect on Europe’s future is ‘Brexit’. The saga of the United Kingdom’s exit from the EU, which has dragged on for four and a half years since the referendum in June 2016, will finally end on January 1st, after which the EU will treat the UK as a non-member.

From the start, Brexit was a quixotic project. Take the symbolic centrality of fishing—which makes up less than 0.1 per cent of the UK’s economy—to the negotiations over the future relations between the UK and the EU. There are many substantive issues at stake, but understanding Brexit requires a grasp of the strange, profoundly anachronistic, English understanding of sovereignty upon from which it is derived.

Co-operation of partners

Traditionally, sovereignty referred to the ability of a state to make decisions about events within its borders without external inference. Globalisation has however progressively robbed individual states in isolation of control over their economic affairs. Global manufacturing and commerce increasingly depend on the co-operation of trading partners, to ensure goods pass across borders and are accepted for sale in foreign markets. From this perspective, free-trade agreements and institutions such as the EU’s single market do not reflect a loss but a pooling of sovereignty: control is extended beyond the boundaries of the state.

Even within global politics sovereignty no longer refers exclusively to the capacity of the state to make arbitrary decisions, but rather to its international obligation ‘to preserve life-sustaining standards for its citizens’, while more widely observing the rule of law and postwar conventions on human rights. Sovereignty is thus about the responsibility to protect the rights and interests of the population, not control.

The understanding of sovereignty propounded by the UK government is mindless of these global developments. The success of ‘take back control,’ the key slogan of the Leave campaign in 2016, lay not only in the outdated idea that sovereignty is the capacity of a state to make unfettered decisions within its borders—an idea that particularly a post-imperial state might be inclined to entertain—but, within that, the singularly English conception of parliamentary sovereignty.

‘Westminster model’

The key feature of the ‘Westminster model’ is that it does not differentiate between constitutional and normal law. Not only can any piece of legislation be undone by simple-majority vote; Parliament is also omnicompetent, as its legislative powers can override all claims to fundamental rights. For example, John Selden famously argued that Parliament could even make staying in bed after 8 o’clock a capital offence.

In this conception, the problem with the EU is that its treaties, with their protections of human rights and market freedoms, limit the UK’s legislative freedom by quasi-constitutional constraints which ‘no Act of the UK Parliament by itself can amend’. For David Frost, the UK’s chief negotiator, ‘Sovereignty is about the ability to get your own rules right in a way that suits our [sic] own conditions.’

This vision explains why the UK negotiators reject any compulsory mechanism for conflict-resolution, whether in the form of non-regression clauses or via entities outside of Parliament’s control, such as the Court of Justice of the EU. It also clarifies the brazen repudiation of international law contained in the Internal Market Bill, which gives the UK the right unilaterally to break the legally binding withdrawal agreement it signed with the EU a little over a year ago.

As Nicholas Westcott points out, this view of sovereignty is ‘closer to that used by North Korea than to that of any other free-trading western nation’. In addition to the rights violations it enables, it also fails to distinguish between theoretical and effective control. In prioritising absolute internal legislative freedom, it sacrifices the effective protection of British interests which membership in the EU offered by giving the UK a vote on conditions in her main export markets, as well as in international affairs.

Seat at the table

The counterintuitive result is that Brexit actually reduces Britain’s effective control in a misguided attempt to increase it: sovereignty is about having a seat at the table. In addition are the envisaged negative impacts on living standards in the UK as well as the EU, albeit to a lesser degree.

Given all this, the European public can only hope that leaders in the UK and elsewhere—especially in those central- and eastern-European states whose obstinacy about the rule of law is based on a similar misreading of sovereignty—learn this lesson without doing too much harm to their peoples. If they do not, the result will be a less co-operative, less prosperous, more divisive and more dangerous environment, in Europe and around the world.

[11Drogba 2,000]

greece: send nudes

british museum: no

greece: cmon those are ours