aasatru

aasatru , vor 15 Tagen

Bobbysocks - La det svinge!. 1985, Eurovision, nothing but good vibes. 🎶

aasatru , vor einem Monat

I think everybody agrees that this shouldn't be an issue.

The threat of war feels a little bit more real when you live just a few miles from the Ukrainian border in Poland then when you read about it in the news in a country outside of what Russia considers their sphere of interest.

Donald Tusk is not threatening with war here. He's just informing of uncomfortable political realities.

aasatru , vor einem Monat

But then the EU is also pushing towards interoperability. If Threads require ID checks and is 15+, but also federates, 13 year olds will just go elsewhere.

I guess the age limit could best be enforced by parents, who would be able to tell their kids they can't use social media before they're old enough. Sure there will still be kids around, but there will be fewer of them.

aasatru , vor einem Monat

You never know what kind of moronic ideas can find a political majority. Especially not when it comes to technology and surveillance.

aasatru , vor einem Monat

Totally vote for us. We're a bunch of na... Uhm, we don't talk about that either. But vote for us anyway.

aasatru , vor einem Monat

Israel is withdrawing their diplomats from Norway. I guess that means random Norwegian civilians are slightly safer today than they were yesterday.

Good riddance and get fucked.

aasatru , vor einem Monat

One of the agents involved has since testified that they knew they were killing the wrong man.

aasatru , vor einem Monat

The plans originate from Italy. There's probably more bad blood between regions in Italy than there is between any two EU member states.

aasatru , vor einem Monat

A great thing about the banners is that it's not immediately obvious to everyone that websites are trying to track their every step online. The banners are annoying, but at least it pushes the tech industry to play with open cards.

aasatru , vor einem Monat

Which hinges, of course, on a free press. Not that it excuses the actions at all, but the democratic argument is sadly not entirely as straightforward as it should be in this case.

aasatru , vor einem Monat

It has absolutely not, and it goes without saying (but is nevertheless worth repeating) that this is completely unacceptable. As long as you're free to demonstrate without risking your safety and the outcomes of elections matter, leaders should be chosen at the ballot.

It's an interesting question how bad the state of democracy needs to be before one is justified to stop playing by the rules. There is a breaking point somewhere, and politicians killing off scrutinizing journalists are clearly moving towards it in a dangerous way. But it is nevertheless clear that Slovakia remained far away from the breaking point of anything like this becoming necessary.

aasatru , vor einem Monat

If its true that you know a person by their enemies, Greta Thunberg deserves a state of herself in every city.

She's on Mastodon at @gretathunberg. Not the most active user, but not dormant either.

aasatru , vor 2 Monaten

The source is full of red flags all over, and it's not reputable at all. Having a fancy header is not the same as "looking credible".

They cite two sources. One is behind a paywall in Swedish, the other is a politician they choose to label as conservative, but who is actually member of the Swedish extreme right (Sverigedemokraterna), not the conservative party (Moderaterna).

aasatru , vor 2 Monaten

The Swedish BBC, SVT, has a better write up on this that can be ran through whatever translation service your heart desires.

The biggest lie the "European Conservative" is pushing seems to be that they are police staff: The concerned individuals are police students, yet "European Conservative" doesn't mention the word student even once. The students have since been expelled.

It seems at least some already associated with criminal networks when they applied for the police academy.

I'm the first to say that Swedish policing looks like amateur hour at times, but this is just disinformation. I suspect the "European Conservative" is neither European nor conservative.

aasatru , vor 2 Monaten

27 students.

aasatru , vor 2 Monaten

I would assume they participate in police work as part of the training, but that's just a guess. :)

aasatru , vor 2 Monaten

Yeah, it's not that DN is not reputable, it's just that I couldn't actually check that they made the same claims as Conservative European. When I checked SVT it said something different, which didn't increase my confidence either.

aasatru , vor 2 Monaten

Doing what exactly?

The EU interfering directly with domestic politics of member states by for example banning political parties would, safe to say, not be well received.

Leyen is completely correct, and for sure the EU needs to work to build resistance in Europe against foreign propaganda, but it's not so straightforward for the EU to intervene in these things. It remains the responsibility of the individual member states, and one might reasonably argue it is better left that way.

That said, when the EU considers banning vectors of foreign surveillance, that is one thing that they can do and that they seem to consider. It's just a fine line between taking action and overstepping. European countries tend to cling to some degree of sovereignity, especially in questions of national security.

aasatru , vor 2 Monaten

For sure, but even then the EU needs to go through the democratic process it has in place. If you try to introduce a law guaranteeing press freedom it'll be vetoed by Hungary.

The question then becomes how much you can achieve with the laws on the books. Traditionally cases will be brought before the Court of Justice, which will then have to decide if it can or should interpret existing laws in an expansive manner in order to cover whatever issue is in front of them. Judicial independence in Poland is a good recent example.

While the Court of Justice could introduce democratic safeguards this way, there's also a certain irony to having democratic safeguards imposed by a supranational organ of 27 judges nobody knows with minimal democratic legitimacy. If the Court of Justice oversteps there's also no guarantee the affected member states will accept its authority, and enforcement mechanisms are limited.

The Court of Justice has generally been pretty successful of pushing an integrationist agenda, but it's only so much it can (and should) do. And if the political organs are deadlocked, the EU is basically a lame duck by design.

aasatru , vor 2 Monaten (Bearbeitet vor 2 Monaten)

But the way Europe works today, that's a national issue.

Hungary and Poland had weak constitutions and lacked democratic guarantees because their constitutions were designed to be subject to change; the idea was that democratically elected officials would draft new and better conditions after a transition period, rather than having the communist parties at the table when drafting them. Unfortunately, the social democrats never bothered to change the constitution, leaving them unchanged until far right parties came to power.

In Italy there's a long tradition of election reforms from far right parties, and their politics has always been a mess. Italy has always worked in spite of, not thanks to, its political leadership, so having a de facto MSI member back in power is not such a radical change.

And bad actors have always taken part in democracy, people just need to have access to education and information to make them not vote for the Le Pens, Farages, Berlisconis, Melonis, and Orbans out there. They should be kept from controlling the media (like Berlusconi), and we need to do better to prevent foreign interference, but we cannot prevent them from participating.

aasatru , vor 2 Monaten

Yeah, and social media makes them good subjects to foreign propaganda as they get older and they get more vulnerable. Education can only achieve so much.

I think there is absolutely a need to better regulate both traditional and social media. The EU is better positioned it the latter in the short term, and I think they're doing a decent job lately.

And for sure, there are many other areas where the EU could hypothetically play an important role. It's just that it cannot just decide to give itself the authority to do so, and if it did that would constitute a democratic problem of comparable magnitude. So I think we need to go to the national level to find politicians to criticise for not doing enough in this regard.

aasatru , vor 2 Monaten

Not at all. New laws would have to be passed, which would need to be approved by the Council and Parliament.

It would be pretty far-fetched considering the current scope of the Union, and it's a political mine field with a not too obvious pay-off. It might, however, be necessary if there are developments towards an European defence pact.

What would be within the scope of the EU is to make the standards for entrance stricter, but this wouldn't really affect the countries already in the Union or prevent backsliding.

aasatru , vor 2 Monaten

When trying to understand Belarusian politics, the main question to ask is "how does Lukasjenko stay alive and free".

He needs to stay in power, and he's only staying in power at the mercy of Putin. And he needs his subjects to have a perception of crisis in order for them to accept his bullshit.

If he allows things to get better he'll be removed from power, at which point he'll either be imprisoned or killed.

aasatru , vor 2 Monaten

That's why this war started in the first place - the people voted for political outsiders who wanted to move closer to Europe, in favour of the old corrupt Russian-friendly elites. Putin was not thrilled that his puppets lost power.

Ukraine had pretty deep problems even before the war.