Is this the same army that just got their budget DOUBLED when the orange took office? Or am I missing something here?

Trump already tore the deal apart didn’t he. It doesn’t seem like any deal made with Trump is worth the paper or saves anyone from his mood swing driven policy.

Actual question: Is it only EU though? I can’t really imagine that any other meat industry on the planet can exist without massive use of antibiotics… pathogens are natures way to deal with crowded overpopulation after all.

Or do we just have reliable data for EU farms?

Don’t get me wrong: Modern meat industry is a huge catastrophe and we should aim for ending this nightmare once and for all… but I wonder why the headline is EU specific.

Yes and no. The original Fanta was what you describe (a substitute for Coke in Nazi Germany) yet it was created from scraps and its taste most probably had little to do with the modern Fanta brand which was created in Italy and inherited the name after war.

I’d argue the windows are way to big for a plane as well…

On a positive note:

It’s fairly probable that someone inside those companys doesn’t pay enough attention due to being overly confindent in the product… and we’ll see leaks of classified data decades before they would have been available to the piblic.

There’s a german word for this: Führerkult.

A common denominator of dictatorships and facist regimes of all kind.

I think most people from rich countries would still prefer the US to be dominant than China. The US at least talks a good game when it comes to freedom of speech, etc. China doesn’t even try to pretend to care about that. But, the US is chaotic and belligerent, whereas China is mostly using soft power these days

I agree with you.

The assumption I make is that the advantages of the US (higher personal freedom, of speech and economically) will further decline as Mango Mussolini respectively the people pulling his strings are far from done with restructuring the US democracy in their favor. In the end US citizens might end up with a repressive system similar to China but with lack of the claim to care for everyone.

For the moment I agree that most Western citizens will still prefer the US society over a Chinese one.

Concerning the ‘will the US recover?’ question, my two cents:

I don’t think the US will be able to recover the lost influence since the prerequisties for it reaching that level if power and influence have changed / are gone. The US dominated ‘the West’ in its fight againgst an authoritarian communist regime and build its global hegemony on the victory in this conflict. Even if the US could regain some trust the current system rival China is way smarter and more convincing in its promises to the regular citizen than the SU was during most of its time… eventhough both systems labeled themselves ‘communis’.

That being said I don’t think the modern US could realistically neither win an arms race based on state finances against China nor make a better promise for the insividuals future. The US hegemony crumbels and imho impossibly will return… if a chinese dominance is better, especially for western citizens, also remains questionable.

He most probably has his dirty hands on Venezuelas oil… high oil prices are a feature, not a bug.

Of course they do… they also bombed Iran during the last two negotiations, didn’t they?

Left out the part where the US/Israel bombed Iran TWICE during ongoing negotiations. Read earlier that the draft for an UN security council resolution demands Iran to go ,with good faith" into negotiations with US/Israel… who came up with this, did they miss the last two rounds of negotiation-bombing?

Having the same thought.

If capitalism eats its own children it might force the world to use FOSS and non-proprietary company structures.

True

To be honest I think this is a cyclic process only being interrupted when inequality and welfare become shitty enough to push a majority of individuals out of their comfort zone… that’s when revolutions happen. Ealier I don’t expect anything to change as the biggest players are allowed to continously shape the system in their favor.

Isn’t this the exact same thing happening durin all other finance crashes in the last decades? I don’t think the modus operandi is much different.

Maybe some fellow Slovenian can explain.

As someone without any knwoledge about the countries inner politics: The US officially announced it’s going to boost right-wing movements across Europe to influence the continent in its favor. Investing loads of money into election campaigning can influence public opinion.

Yep, with the small flaw that the US nursed an anti-democratic dictatorship in the process… which kind of led to the problem nobody was willing to defend it after the US retreated.

Doesn’t this boil down to self-censorship in public? Better not critizise the government in public becaus you never know whos waring smart glasses…

I’m in favor of your position but this

You can either believe the shit you just said

is just rude and that way, you won’t generate support for your position among people who don’t already agree with you. I think that’s counterproductive, because cooperation is the most effective weapon you have against a repressive state.

I asked a simple question to understand the situation and you start insulting me.

My argument would be that people definitely would make bad decisions in the beginning. But that wouldn’t be that far off of the status quo, would it?

My hope would be that this system gives an incentive to ACTUALLY get informed about the matter you vote on since you’re actively choosing to get involved instead of voting on every topic (also the ones you have 0.0 interest in) every 4 years. Another point, which may be a bit far fetched idk, could be that you theoretically could use LLMs to summarize the various proposed solutions and their justifications. In the system I have in mind, the experts you mentioned would also submit proposed solutions.

Based on your example:

Problem formulated for the petition: “Rents are too high.”

If the petition goes through, anyone could propose solutions. For example, “rent control” (proposed by someone on the left), “foreigners out” (proposed by someone on the right), “revise building standards and invest in public housing” (an expert).

The population might follow the populists at first… However, if the problem is not solved after 10 years, you can’t blame “those at the top” for the solution not working, and hopefully there will be a rethink.

Maybe this is just a utopian fantasy of mine. But I have the feeling that our democratic systems are not up to the challenges of the digitalized 21st century and growing inequality… this is the best solution I have come up with so far.