Politics & Stuff

[YorkshireBlue 3,122]

29 minutes ago, Fulham Broadway said:

Mate has done that - had a skip hire company. making good living. Saw him few months ago, moving family, lock stock and barrel abroad, sold the business. His main reason said hes fed up with people being so rude and entitled

Well, that's not massive problem in Yorkshire, people are alot more down to earth here than say London, I can't visit London anymore the people there piss me off too much I'd just end up been locked up 😂 but yeah the quality of life isn't worth the now ridiculous prices, you can go some where far warmer and nicer, pay the same and have a better quality of life, my family owns a huge housing company in new Zealand, the sorta equivalent to say Barrett homes over here, definitely becoming a more likely option.

Edited June 3 by YorkshireBlue

[Fulham Broadway 16,829]

5 minutes ago, YorkshireBlue said:

Well, that's not massive problem in Yorkshire, people are alot more down to earth here than say London, I can't visit London anymore the people there piss me off too much I'd just end up been locked up 😂 but yeah the quality of life isn't worth the now ridiculous prices, you can go some where far warmer and nicer, pay the same and have a better quality of life, my family owns a huge housing company in new Zealand, the sorta equivalent to say Barrett homes over here, definitely becoming a more likely option.

..and they have the civilised assisted dying there - there was that UK woman last week died on NZ beach with all her family round her. not reason in itself to go Kiwi, 😃 but shows their forward thinking...

[Fulham Broadway 16,829]

 Farage has pledged to lead Reform UK not just for the election, but for the next five years in a longer-term campaign to become the real opposition to a Labour Government.

Interesting to see who lasts the longest out of their 5 years, Enzo or Fromage

[YorkshireBlue 3,122]

2 minutes ago, Fulham Broadway said:

..and they have the civilised assisted dying there - there was that UK woman last week died on NZ beach with all her family round her. not reason in itself to go Kiwi, 😃 but shows their forward thinking...

Oh yes, I am definitely on that opinion aswell, in that circumstance if you have had enough and are serious poorly, it should by your choice

[cosmicway 1,323]

Farage is the British Tsipras.
The Greek Tsipras fell on his knees infront of Putin during the last days of the Greek crisis, 2015.
But Putin was not in the mood and all he gave him was a puppie dog.
So Tsipras sacked Yanis and returned to the EU.
Farage hopes Trump will become president and fall on his knees so UK can become the 51st state.

[Vesper 28,767]

The US is going insane

University of Texas professors sue to fail students who seek abortions

Men are using abortion bans to control and abuse women in their lives for "consensual sexual intercourse"

https://www.salon.com/2024/06/03/texas-professors-to-fail-students-seek-abortions/

A pair of Texas professors figured out that their female students have sex and, boy, they do not like it. So now the philosophy professor and finance professor are suing for the right to punish their students who, outside of class, have abortions.

"Pregnancy is not a disease, and elective abortions are not 'health care,'" University of Texas at Austin professor Daniel Bonevac sneers in a federal court filing with professor John Hatfield. Instead, Bonevac writes, because pregnancy is the result of "voluntary and consensual sexual intercourse," students should not be allowed time off to get abortions. If the students disobey and miss class for abortion care, the filing continues, the professors should be allowed to flunk students. Additionally, Bonevac asserts that he has a right to refuse to employ a teaching assistant who has had an abortion, calling such women "criminals."

The sexual hang-ups of abortion opponents are rarely far from the surface, but even by those low standards, the unjustified male grievance on display in this new Texas lawsuit is a doozy. At issue are federal regulations, called Title IX, first signed into law by President Richard Nixon in 1972. They currently bar publicly funded schools from discriminating on the basis of sex or gender. This means that schools cannot penalize students for health care based on sex. As a male student would be granted leave if he had to travel for surgery, so must a female student, the federal statute requires. The two men argue that granting students an excused absence in such cases violates their First Amendment rights.

Even though the plaintiffs suing for the right to flunk female students for abortion include boilerplate arguments in which they feign concern that abortion is "killing," the legal filing makes it clear that what really outrages Bonevac and Hatfield is that Title IX prevents them from controlling the private lives of students. Along with their anger about abortion, they  grouse about not being allowed to punish students "for being homosexual or transgender." They also argue they should be able to penalize teaching assistants for "cross-dressing," by which they appear to mean allowing trans women to wear skirts.

As Jessica Valenti at Abortion, Every Day wrote, the language of the legal complaint is "downright petulant." The picture painted is of two men obsessed with controlling student lives based on what they're packing inside their underwear. It should be common sense that college students should be graded on their performance in class, not whether or not their professor resents their sex life or sexual identity. Alas, because the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and Texas banned abortion, it's created a pretext for every busybody who wants to spend less time grading papers and more time working himself into an angry froth over the imagined sexual exploits of his students. 

Even though Bonevac and Hatfield work in Austin, Texas, they filed their lawsuit 486 miles away in Amarillo, Texas. The reason for this is not mysterious: Donald Trump-appointed judge Matthew Kacsmaryk. The right-wing judge has a long and frankly unhinged history of screeching at top volume about the evils of "sexual revolutionaries." (Yes, that does sound like a compliment, but he doesn't mean it as such.) It takes very little to draw Kacsmaryk's sexualized condemnation. Premarital sex, for instance, makes one a "sexual revolutionary." Using contraception within marriage also makes one an irredeemable pervert. In his legal writings, Kacsmaryk is very clear that sex is only for procreation within marriage, and anything outside of that should draw legal sanction. He has not weighed in on whether there should be restrictions on what sexual positions are legally permissible within the procreation-only marital sex, but give him time. 

Unfortunately, the Dobbs decision, which ended abortion rights, didn't just empower professors who are overly preoccupied with the sex lives of undergraduates. Texas has swiftly turned into a case study in how abortion bans aren't really about "life" at all, but about giving abusive misogynists a whole new set of tools to use in controlling women. As Melissa Gira Grant at the New Republic wrote earlier this month, domestic "[a]busers have noticed and taken advantage" of how abortion bans mean the "legal system itself" is now "an instrument of abuse." Operators at domestic violence hotlines have seen a surge in calls from victims whose abusers who "use state anti-abortion laws to intimidate and threaten partners" who have had or are considering an abortion.

One would think the Republicans who wrote the abortion bans might want to distance themselves from terrible men using the laws as leverage to force women into sexual relationships. Instead, Republicans are embracing the cause of men who believe coercion is an acceptable substitute for romance. Jonathan Mitchell, the former Texas solicitor general who wrote one of the two major Texas abortion bans, has been representing men who don't even bother to hide that they are motivated by a belief that women simply don't have a right to say no to them. 

We've covered the first case, of Marcus Silva, extensively at Salon. Court filings accuse Silva of extensive abuse of his ex-wife, including getting drunk at her work party and calling her misogynist names in front of colleagues. Her friends document how he reportedly knew his ex-wife was going to abort a pregnancy, but didn't try to stop her. Instead, he wanted to use her abortion as leverage. Text messages show him threatening to turn her and her friends into the law after her abortion unless she returned to do his laundry and have sex with him. Mitchell is representing Silva in a lawsuit against his ex-wife's friends for "aiding and abetting" an abortion that made it easier for her to leave him. 

Turns out Mitchell is quickly creating a cottage industry of using the Texas law to help men harass ex-girlfriends. As the Texas Tribune reported earlier this month, Mitchell is representing two more men who want to use legal action to punish their ex-girlfriends for traveling out of state to get a legal abortion. In one case, the woman's lawyers argued it was part of a "scheme to harass an ex-girlfriend who has moved on from her relationship with him." Even if Mitchell never moves to sue the women, their providers, or their friends who helped, by filing legal motions, a legal expert told the Tribune, Mitchell can put "the woman in front of a court reporter and force her to answer questions." Making a woman sit through humiliating questioning at the hands of an abusive ex-boyfriend is clearly a punishment in and of itself. And, again, for using her legal and moral right to terminate an unwanted relationship. 

In the decades after Roe v. Wade, the Christian right insisted stridently that their opposition to abortion was about "protecting life," and was not about restoring male dominance over women. That this was a lie was always evident to those willing to look even a centimeter below the surface. These same forces also organized against sex education and affordable contraception, both far more effective at preventing abortion than abortion bans. But in the aftermath of Dobbs, there can be no doubt. After red states started banning abortion, the abortion rate rose, fitting the pattern seen in other countries with severe abortion restrictions, because anti-abortion states also tend to be hostile to pregnancy prevention. 

These series of legal maneuvers in Texas further flesh out what's really going on here. Nosy right-wing professors and angry ex-boyfriends are not, despite their feeble protestations to the contrary, just really into babies. For people who actually care about children, there are plenty of volunteer opportunities that aid real kids who need food to eat and opportunities to grow. Instead, the throughline is anger at women, whether students in their classrooms or ex-girlfriends who don't return their calls, for living their lives outside of the control of the men who feel entitled to dominate them.

[Vesper 28,767]

Collapse of Industrial Civilization 

Finding the Truth behind the American Hologram

 

Last Rites for a Dying Civilization

https://collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/2024/05/31/last-rites-for-a-dying-civilization/

When the Black Death struck Europe in the Middle Ages, the fundamental values that held society together broke down. Husbands and wives abandoned each other and mothers abandoned their children. This void of ethics that overtook the population is described in Boccaccio’s Decameron, considered a masterpiece of Italian prose and a documentary of life during that time. The book describes the sense of hopelessness that spread throughout the world, because it did not matter what stature one held in life or what one did or did not do to avoid the disease, all were subject to its lethality. Some implored their God in vain while others pursued a carpe diem spirit in an attempt to grab the last bit of pleasure from life when they were able. The common explanation for the indiscriminate devastation wrought by the Black Plague was God’s punishment for human wrongdoing. Nothing in human behavior has changed since then and I believe the ecological overshoot that man finds himself in today, manifested most prominently as climate chaos amongst a myriad of other threats, will cause humans to question the futility of life and their existence just as did those victims of the bubonic plague. A recent study has found that climate chaos is indeed worsening neurological diseases and mental health disorders. Another study found that people are denying climate change as a form of self-deception necessary to maintain their psychological health. 

Since those Dark Ages, mankind has developed the ability to accurately track and predict our own demise. Vast networks of satellites and other data monitoring tools are informing us that the planet is becoming increasingly more inhospitable for the vast majority of life on Earth, yet we plod onward, ignoring another plea by the world’s scientists. A reassessment of the Limits to Growth Study and its World3 model using different calibrations was done 6 months ago and the results are the same, which is to say that humanity is still following business-as-usual and heading for collapse within the next two decades:

...the model results clearly indicate the imminent end of the exponential growth curve. The excessive consumption of resources by industry and industrial agriculture to feed a growing world population is depleting reserves to the point where the system is no longer sustainable.

All the expertise and modern technology we possess will not be coming to save us; there is no techno-fix or deus ex machina remotely scalable to the planetary crises we face. Emergency atmospheric geoengineering schemes won’t save us at this point. Can’t we just suck the 900 billion tons of CO₂ out of the atmosphere that we have spewed since the beginning of the industrial revolution? No. It bears repeating that the spiking Keeling curve is non-reversible on human timescales.

“We sadly continue to break records in the CO₂ rise rate,” said Ralph Keeling, director of the CO₂ program at Scripps. “The ultimate reason is continued global growth in the consumption of fossil fuels.” ~ May 8, 2024

The rate of ocean warming has nearly quadrupled since the late twentieth century, doubling since 1993. In the last twelve month, ocean heating has been on a tear, shattering records consistently. The world is currently undergoing the fourth global coral bleaching event on record, the second in the last decade, and the Great Barrier Reef is suffering its worst bleaching event in recorded history. This year’s hurricane season will likely be a record-breaker. The oceans are starting to release all that thermal energy we have been unceremoniously dumping into them. At one time, oceans seemed like an endless sink for the emissions from humanity’s nonstop consumption of fossil fuels, but that appears to be coming to an end. The world’s rivers are warming and losing oxygen even faster than the oceans. In contrast to those grim stats, humanity is set to consume more resources in the next 30 years as we have since the dawn of civilization. We have already consumed the future and are now, as they say, eating the seed corn.

We have breached tipping points and set in motion positive feedback loops that are accelerating non-linear ecological changes. Six of nine major planetary boundaries have been broken. Our unintended and haphazard experiment with complex Earth systems will unleash a Pandora’s box of deadly consequences. The current rate of CO₂ change is unprecedented for the past 50,000 years. We have already passed the 1.5C warming threshold set by the Paris Agreement to prevent the irreversible and worsening effects of climate change. A recent study warns that as we add more and more CO₂ to the atmosphere, its potency for warming is stronger at higher atmospheric concentrations than an equivalent increase at lower atmospheric concentrations. The polar regions are warming four times faster than the rest of the planet and have been undergoing fundamental changes to their ocean/ice system which will affect all life on Earth. An ice-free Arctic is just around the corner. In a warming world, pathogens will be looking for ways to exploit the fast-changing environment, potentially creating the next global pandemic for people or destroying our food supply. The tree line, as well as animals, are expanding northward as the climate heats up and the ice melts. Nearly a third of all tree species are now endangered by our radically changing environment. The clear blue waters of Alaskan rivers are turning orange and rusty brown by the heavy metals being released from melting permafrost. The oceans are also turning green due to the shift in phytoplankton population from warming waters.

The insurance industry, the backbone of the global economy, is beginning to buckle: “I believe we’re marching toward an uninsurable future.” As is typical of our modern-day society, the hypocrytical insurance industry is heavily invested in fossil fuels while simultaneously warning about the looming destruction from climate change. Billion dollar disasters are increasing while the time between such disasters is decreasing. This continual rebuilding that needs to be done more often would be another doom-loop cycle for our crumbling civilization, considering the carbon emissions required in such repair and reconstruction. Compound extreme weather and climate events, combinations of two or more extremes (hazards) that occur concurrently or sequentially, are also increasing and expected to grow many fold over in the future. These compound weather events will inevitably create a perfect storm that will one day permanently destroy supply chains and economies by acting as a constant disruptor to stability. It would have the same effect as a monster cyclone, or hypercane, traveling the globe in perpetuity, waxing and waning in strength but never dying, and leaving a path of destruction wherever it roamed. A stable climate no longer exists to support the reconstruction of what once was. Walden Thoreau’s words seem very prescient today: “What is the use of a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?” With corporations also gobbling up single-family homes to monopolize the real estate market in America, we can officially say that the American dream of owning a home is dead. George Carlin always said you had to be asleep to believe anything about the American Dream.

I have been hearing about the need to abandon fossil fuels since President Carter put solar panels on the White House 45 years ago. I am still waiting for the techno-optimists to explain to me how they will save us from this new age we have created, known as the Pyrocene or Age of Fire; rest in peace, Holocene. We could also call our modern-day clusterfuck the Plasticene or Age of Plastics. Scientists are finding the stuff in every nook and cranny of the planet, including Antarctic krill, men’s testicles, and throughout the human body. If you drive a vehicle, you are contributing to the primary source for microplastics in the environment, tires, which account for 78%. Just as they lied about their knowledge of the catastrophic effects from burning their fossil fuel products, so too did the oil and plastics industry lie about their greenwashing fraud called recycling.

I never get an adequate, rational answer to our conundrum, because there is none. ChatGPT provides no better insight than the techno-optimists. The problem of a planet overrun by humans will resolve itself in short order and be recorded in the geologic fossil record after we put a cherry on top of this fossil fuel orgy, flattening the planet into a glass parking lot with nuclear weapons. That is another part of human nature that we will never escape…warfare. We seem to be one twitch away from WWIII and the next Stone Age. In fact, there are nearly 200 armed conflicts raging around the world right now, the largest number in decades. This marked uptick in violence could be an ominous sign of a violent new era. From the 2023 Armed Conflict Survey:

“The accelerating climate crisis continues to act as a multiplier of both root causes of conflict and institutional weaknesses in fragile countries…”

We are on the verge of authoritarian rule as global conditions break down and people embrace centralized solutions. Xenophobia will grow and borders will be shut down, sources of food and energy will be fought over and secured, and rationing of resources will be enforced.

After studying our ecological overshoot for several decades, I have some observations that must be accepted as fact:

• “Renewable” energy is not displacing our massive fossil fuel consumption at all, but only serving as a small addition to the total global energy consumption.
• “Renewable” or alternative energy, such as solar and wind, is dependent on fossil fuels for its manufacture, installation, maintenance, and eventual disposal.
•  The so-called “Energy Transition” away from fossil fuels is pure techno-hopium and will never materialize.
• The general public and many scientists don’t understand the math and physics involved in transitioning a $100 trillion global economy, dependent on hydrocarbons, to intermittent alternative energy sources.
• No such “Energy Transition” can be accomplished without radical reductions in resource consumption. This is antithetical to the basic biological urge for expansion by most organisms, including humans, and current trends illustrate this behavior. We also keep finding more ways to consume evermore energy. On top of this, the World Bank is urging faster economic growth for emerging economies in order for them to repay mounting debts.
• Governments are ill-equipped to deal with industrial civilization’s complex polycrisis because effective solutions would undermine economic growth.

The latest deadline to ‘save the planet’ is now two years from now, according to a UN Climate Change official. No doubt another arbitrary date given to justify someone’s job and department budget. According to Global Footprint Network’s calculations, humans have been in overshoot for over half a century. Others would say that we have been in overshoot since the dawn of agriculture 10,000 years ago, surviving only by mining the Earth’s soils. Like fossil fuels, the vast nutrient store of soils represents a unique one-time gift that has been squandered by agricultural erosion. Without petroleum and arable soils, the Earth will only support perhaps 5% of the present global population, as it did before the advent of agriculture. Considering that we are being constantly blindsided by faster-than-normal and worse-than-expected findings from scientists, I suspect there are far less food harvests left for us than we think. Hotter temperatures and pollution are hastening the destruction of topsoil. Our temporary extension of Earth’s carrying capacity for humans is coming to an end. Once Earth’s life support systems start to unravel, the grotesquely inflated human population will crash. In the meantime, “Memento moriturum; maxime faciunt vitae!” 

My last post was in September 2023, and since then, the state of the planet has gotten considerably worse. I feel like the 2030’s will be the decade when the wheels start coming off this ride of industrial civilization. Until I speak to you all again, please enjoy those blue skies and store-bought food while they last. And remember, industrial civilization is a heat engine and it will suddenly break one day!

[cosmicway 1,323]

The coalition of the parties of the extreme right is expected to come first in the euroelections of 9th of June.
They have expelled the German party because of openly pronazi statements but the rest of them are expected to win the first place.
They will not be the majority in the Europarliament because there will be more of all the others added together but will be first.

Before you make comments about it on the 10th of June I will tell you why:

- To the left of the European People's party (christian democrats - liberals) is a sea of i-d-i-o-t-s, they have made lots of people sympathetic to the extremists.
- Together with the CDUs - so called libs they tax the sh*t out of people with objective taxation which means sizeable downpayments before one has seen the colour of one euro in his pocket.

Maybe there is more.
You will give me your reasons after the 9/6 because now most of you believe ... Yanis Varoufakis is out to sweep the boards clean.

About taxation you know what one of the leading leftists said a few years back ?

... why are n't these people making consortiums with Citroen, Mercedes Benz ?

meaning the veg vendors outside your house of course.
This man expects my vote now.

Edited June 4 by cosmicway

[Vesper 28,767]

18 hours ago, cosmicway said:

The coalition of the parties of the extreme right is expected to come first in the euroelections of 9th of June.

Are you saying that Identity and Democracy (ID) and the European Reformists and Conservatives (ECR) will combine to have a majority (361 or more seats)?

Zero chance of that happening.

[cosmicway 1,323]

7 hours ago, Vesper said:

Are you saying that Identity and Democracy (ID) and the European Reformists and Conservatives (ECR) will combine to have a majority (361 or more seats)?

Zero chance of that happening.

They will be first - no majority when all the others are added.
In Greece New Democracy ~ 30% from 33% taking into account the loose vote in euroelections, then extreme right ~ 12% from 6%, then left wing imbeciles the rest plus many small time candidates.

[Vesper 28,767]

Many white Americans fail to assimilate

[robsblubot 3,502]

True and at the same time much of the left is totally OK with Muslim women being fully covered, because they "chose" to.

The extremely religious have a hard time adapting to a new culture unless it's the same religion of the majority (say the right extremists).

Edited June 5 by robsblubot

[Vesper 28,767]

Talking Points

[Vesper 28,767]

7 hours ago, robsblubot said:

much of the left is totally OK with Muslim women being fully covered, because they "chose" to.

I do not see this here in Sweden and many other places. Some, yes, but not much.

[Vesper 28,767]

Jonathan Pie: 2024 Election Specials: 1.The economy

In a series of election specials Pie looks at the main issues that will decide this coming election. Today he's looking at the omni-shambles that is the UK economy.

 

[Fulham Broadway 16,829]

80 Years since D day and liberation of Europe.

Listening to some of the D day vets, they were 17 and 18 year old kids at the time - they say 'we were children, not men' - they all have the same message 'war is hell' no matter how the media make it sound 'exciting'.

The German vets are very happy with D day as well, they say they were terrified of the Soviet Union dominating Europe.

Most are in their 90s and 100s now, so will not be around for the next commemoration. We should not forget their sacrifices, and all the freedoms we just take for granted.

[YorkshireBlue 3,122]

1 hour ago, Fulham Broadway said:

80 Years since D day and liberation of Europe.

Listening to some of the D day vets, they were 17 and 18 year old kids at the time - they say 'we were children, not men' - they all have the same message 'war is hell' no matter how the media make it sound 'exciting'.

The German vets are very happy with D day as well, they say they were terrified of the Soviet Union dominating Europe.

Most are in their 90s and 100s now, so will not be around for the next commemoration. We should not forget their sacrifices, and all the freedoms we just take for granted.

Imagine this generation doing this now, we would be absolutely slaughtered.

[Sir Mikel OBE 4,919]

2 hours ago, YorkshireBlue said:

Imagine this generation doing this now, we would be absolutely slaughtered.

Their parents said the same thing about them:
 

Old people always think the young are soft and lazy, but when its time to show they aren't, the kids usually come through for us😂