Okay, like two/thirds of this post are just fucking brain-dead. (Not an American btw.)
Afghanistan and Gulf War were the most straightforward of all conflicts US has been involved in in the 21st century.
Afghanistan - that’s where the Taliban were, and the Taliban did 9/11 (kinda, Al Qaeda did, but they had ties, and bin Laden was there for a time). The only problem was that the US didn’t consider the regional politics and allied with Pakistan, which was funding the Taliban, since stable Afghanistan was bad for Pakistan.
Gulf War - he, y’know, INVADED KUWAIT! What the fuck is so difficult to understand about “Invading sovereign states is bad actually”!?
As the other comment said, that’s a façade. It’s not actual bricks, but rather pieces of stone (or, judging by the fact that these exact shapes can be found worldwide, lookalikes) that are laid onto the face of a brick/cinder block/concrete core.
I know what the meme is supposed to represent, but the Tolkien nerd in me feels the need to correct the universal misunderstanding of the picture used.
Frodo isn’t saying he can’t read the inscription on the One Ring because it’s in Elvish. He actually is pretty fluent in Elvish in the novel, but the inscription on the Ring was in the Black Speech, which he couldn’t recognise.
For real though. Yes the CEO can get a pay cut, but that is unlikely to save more than a few individuals. The costs of labour are just that high, often the highest of all costs a company has. That’s why laying off staff, although terrible, is the best way to save money for a company.
I agree that CEOs earn waaaaay to much for what they actually do, but cutting that is not the magic solution people imagine it is.
Even the famous pay cut by Shigeru Miyamoto of Nintendo was accompanied by other cost saving measures in the company, and only because Japanese law demands that layoffs be the last thing a company does.
Houthi is a name of a tribe, a surname of the tribe’s leader, as well as the name of a movement associated with that tribe.
The Houthi movement is a Shi’a Islamist movement from Yemen (where about 1/3 of the population are Shi’a, and 2/3 Sunni). The movement has been on the opposing side to the Yemeni government in the long Yemeni Civil War.
Allegedly it’s supported by Iran (which Iran officially declined) and it’s mottos include “Death to America” and “Death to Israel”. That should explain roughly why they are causing a stir in the Red Sea region.
Napoleon, despite the whole “overthrowing republic in favour of monarchy” thing is considered to be one of the main reasons the ideals of the Revolution managed to stick in Europe. Napoleonic Code was a piece of legislation far more progressive than most of that era, and continued to be used in many countries that were subservient to Napoleonic France until the 20th century.
How many thousands civilians oops, pardon, “terrorists” did IDF kill until now exactly? Not a single person in their right mind would complain if IDF targeted only terrorists. But at a certain point, when civilian casualties from the retaliation far outweigh the casualties from the initial attack we need to ask ourselves “What is even the point of this?”
Did anything I say imply I’m pro-Hamas? Or anti-Jewish? No, I clearly wrote that I’m anti-IDF and anti-Netanyahu government. The government that shortly before the war started was facing massive protests due to its authoritarian policies, and that is rumoured by Israeli citizen to be using the war to distract the public from its aforementioned scandals.
You should also consider the fact that Israeli authorities propped up Hamas as a counterweight to PLO, which they feared would be able to successfully win Palestinian independence. And similarly to how Pakistan propped up the Taliban, now that the radical Islamists got into power, they begun conducting terror attacks on the territory of the country that helped them.
“Do you ever stop to think ‘Are we the baddies?’” says the person unironically supporting a government that calls its civilian victims “animals”
You seriously believe in Lamarck? Like, I don’t know, I’m not a native speaker, maybe I’m missing something.
How many fucking times do we have to repeat this: TRAITS ACQUIRED DURING LIFETIME ARE NON-INHERITABLE
If you lose your fingers in an industrial accident, your children aren’t going to be born fingerless, are they?
Giraffes don’t have long necks because one little giraffe long, long ago tried really, really hard to grow a longer neck, but because giraffes who had been born with longer necks could compete better than those without, and pass on their genes. And they got those necks due to mutations.
Environmental pressure selects for benefitial mutations, while the mutations themselves are random. That’s literally the mechanism of evolution through natural selection.
It was Polish truck drivers, not farmers. They protested the fact that Ukrainian transport firms were allowed by the EU to operate on the European market without regular restrictions, which, in their opinion, gives Ukrainian drivers an unfair advantage, as not following the regulations allows them to offer lower prices than others.
This protest has been ongoing for a few weeks by now, but there has been no movement from the government, as it has begun in the middle of the post-election transition period, as the ruling coalition changed.
Some interpreted the inaction, as an attempt to dump the responsibility for this mess on the other side of the political divide, and the ability to meet the demands of the protesters is seen as an important test for the new coalition, especially in context of the Ukraine-Russia war.
Domestically, most agree that the interests of the domestic industry should be prioritised, but shouldn’t be allowed to compromise the security situation of Ukraine, since they are fighting Russia, seen as the biggest geopolitical threat to Poland.
So the entire thing will be a delicate balancing act, of accounting for the well-being of domestic enterprises, the strategic and diplomatic interests of the state (i.e. helping Ukraine kick Russia’s teeth in), and taking care of the problem as quickly as possible.
For context, the demands of Polish drivers include returning to the previous system of permissions and an audit of Ukrainian transport companies created after the escalation of conflict, however they do not want restrictions on transport of humanitarian aid and army supplies for Ukraine.
The new Polish government has gutted the top management of public television, making good on a campaign promise to reform a broadcaster that functioned as a mouthpiece of its rightwing populist predecessor, but also prompting criticism of their methods from some quarters....
Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość - PiS) has illegally taken control of state media back in 2016. Normally the chairs and boards of state media are managed by the National Council of Radio and Television (Krajowa Rada Radiofonii i Telewizji - KRRiT). This is a constitutional provision, and members of the Council have terms. So PiS passed a law that moved these competences to a new body, that they created. That law was declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court (Trybunał Konstytucyjny - TK), which normally would mean the end of the story, so what did PiS do?
They ignored the courts.
New leadership of the state TV got an increase in funding and set to work turning it into a propaganda tube for the party. Most of old presenters left in protest, but that didn’t deter the people in charge. For the past 8 years, the formerly decently impartial state TV, that used to report on government corruption and scandals, became an unceasing stream of adoration for “the greatest government in history, that valiantly fights for the betterment of Poles”. People compared the primitive propaganda of the past 8 years to that of Best Korea (to the point that you should be able to find on YouTube DPRK’s propaganda videos with audio from Polish state TV replacing the original audio)
So when the right wing populist government finally “fell off a bike”, as we say in Poland, the priority of the new team was to undo the clusterfuck that were state media.
Yesterday (20th of December) at 11:00, Minister of Culture and National Heritage, Bartłomiej Sienkiewicz, decreed, based on the Code of Trading Companies (which governs regular companies as well as state enterprises), that the chairs and boards of Polish Television, Polish Radio and Polish Press Agency (all state owned) were fired, and who would be their replacements.
18 minutes later, the news channel TVP Info stopped broadcasting, and it’s signal was replaced with TVP 1. Over the next hours the new leader of state TV arrived at its headquarters and slowly but surely, the new team took back the media, including the social media accounts of the state TV. Last holdouts included Twitter/X.
Obviously we were all following this with bated breath, including the ad hoc protest of around 200 people in defence of “independent media”, and “constitutional order” i.e. screaming that it’s not fair that the old team doesn’t get to keep spewing propaganda for our tax money.
At 19:30 instead of regular news segment, old (pre-2016) presenter came on air and said that everyone deserves to have actual news instead of propaganda in the state TV that they paid for, and that the news segment will return tomorrow (in other words today - 21st of December).
I can assure you, that for the first time in 8 years thousands, if not millions of Poles, will turn on the state TV.
For some additional things:
There was a vote about a motion to “depoliticise the state media” in Parliament. Law and Justice MPs didn’t take part in the vote because… They went to state TV to protest the changes (when reporting on that, the state TV, at the time still loyal, covered the number of MPs who voted against)
Two PiS MPs were declared guilty in a 6-year long trial that same day. They automatically lost their mandates for this, and instead of going to the Police… They also went to the state TV headquarters. The Police followed them, which prompted cries of “police brutality” from the protesters (ironic, considering they were the ones who used police brutality just a few months earlier).
A presenter from TVP hijacked a farming news segment to rant about the takeover, until the power was cut off, ending his rant mid-sentence.
Former TVP employees went to a private right-wing news to hold their own news segment at 19:30, lulz were had.
Some stuff was obviously done with sticks and scotch tape so to say, since the takeover was very chaotic, the new team didn’t really have much resources. But it seems a lot of lower level people have been retained.
The first segment was about the takeover itself, and while it kinda reeked of propaganda, after they’ve shown the government’s justification for the whole thing, they brought up the President’s response. And he is from Law and Justice, the previous team. This is what made people cry, since for the first time in 8 years you could hear the opposition voices in state media.
It only got better from there with the budget, where every party got a moment, and the sentencing of those two MPs I’ve mentioned in main comment.
Overall rather bland, but most people say that’s what public media should be like - bland and including every side involved.
Of course, it doesn’t mean that every view should be acceptable, but they should be inclusive, even to those with fringe views.
Also, it’s Grigoriy Braunovitch, the resident Russian schizo, for him that’s Tuesday.
Also, also, Tusk is Prime Minister now, after the vote of confidence for the third Morawiecki cabinet failed 190-266, and Parliament picked it’s own candidate. All 248 democratic opposition candidates (i.e. not the previous government or the party of that clown in the article) signed the motion to pick him as Prime Minister.
Law and Justice - people who unironically believe that life was better under Communism, believers of the Toruń Catholic Church of Saintest Saint John Paul “singlehandedly destroyed Communism” II, demented seniors, basically anyone epitomising the term “Land of the Blooming Onion”
Confederation (Braun and co.) - Fascists, ancaps, techbros, Russian spies, conspiracy theorists, sexists, nationalists who believe Eligiusz Niewiadomski (google him) was the greatest hero of this country, and finally (and unfortunately) young men, who believe no other party has anything to offer them in a world where their prospects is being a wage salve to some corpo, or homeless.
Donald Tusk, a leader of a centrist party, returned as Poland’s prime minister for the first time in nearly a decade after a vote in parliament on Monday, paving the way for a new pro-European Union government following eight years of stormy national conservative rule....
On th 15th of October, the ruling “United Right” coalition (or Law and Justice and satellites) lost the parliamentary election, getting 194 seats (231 necessary for majority in lower house). It became the most important election in modern Polish history, with 74.38% of registered voters voting, beating the 1989 elections that ended Communist rule in the country. After that, the slow process of transition to a new government began.
The President (Law and Justice) chose the date for the start of a new Parliament, and, in a controversial move, ignored the three committees that announced their intention to form a majority coalition government (with 248 seats total), instead giving the task of forming the government to Mateusz Morawiecki, the Prime Minister for the past two Parliaments (also Law and Justice).
For the past two weeks Morawiecki had to face the task everyone acknowledged was impossible: forming a majority in a Parliament where every party was against them, and they had no majority. Many see this appointment as an attempt, by his own party, to kill Morawiecki’s political career, as after the inevitable failure to form a new cabinet, he would be forced to shoulder the blame for the party’s failure.
As an aside, it’s worth mentioning, that Law and Justice is not in its best shape right now. The party’s de facto leader, Jarosław Kaczyński is considered to be in progressively deteriorating health. There are few that could possibly take the reins of the party after his departure from politics (be it due to retirement or death). The most likely are Zbigniew Ziobro, a christofascist, homophobic psycho, largely responsible for the dismantling of the independent judiciary, and Morawiecki himself. Morawiecki has little ideological zeal, he is, for all intents and purposes, a bland professional, a former banker and, ironically, Donald Tusk’s economic advisor, back before 2014.
In the background, the outgoing government tried it’s hardest to entrench itself in any position of power it could, giving positions to, as we say it, the “mediocre, passive but loyal”, any cousins that managed to get by without stealing anything so far, hardliners and so on. Their hope is, that the new government wouldn’t be able to completely clean house from the dregs of nepotism and corruption, and that they could latch on until (hopefully for them) next election.
Of main interest were positions related to state media, strategic enterprises and any positions that could sabotage any and all efforts of the incumbents.
So the party does not like Morawiecki. Some expected him, to take the last lifeboat on a sinking ship, and announce before his exposé (an address before the lower house, where the Prime Minister tries to convince it to give the new cabinet a vote of confidence), that he couldn’t form a cabinet, thus saving himself from the disgrace.
That did not happen.
Yesterday Poles all over the country, before TV sets, online, in cinemas (sic!) and over 400k live on YouTube (beating, or nearly beating the national record for the biggest live audience) were treated to the newest episode of our latest favourite Sitcom “Pierwsze posiedzenie Sejmu Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej” (1st session of the Sejm (pronounced “same”) of the Republic of Poland) from 10 o’clock to just past 19 (7PM for computationally challenged), as Mateusz Morawiecki tried to convince a room full of haters that his cabinet will be great.
I could go on and on about all the insane shit that happened, all the hypocrisy of Law and Justice, but we all know where this ends up.
On the 11th of December, 2023, at around 16:20 (4:20PM) CEST, the Sejm, voting 190 for to 266 against, with 4 absent, decided AGAINST granting the 3rd Morawiecki cabinet the vote of confidence.
For the first time in modern history, the presidential pick for Prime Minister failed the vote of confidence.
Great! So what do we do now?
Now begun “the second constitutional step”, where the Sejm itself picked the Prime Minister from amongst their own.
The Marshall of the Sejm (Speaker) decreed, that the Convention of Seniors (marshall, deputy marshalls and representatives of all parties) will meet with him to decide upon a candidate.
An hour later, Donald Tusk was announced as the new Prime Minister.
The motion for his appointment was signed by 248 MPs, representing all members of the “democratic opposition” - Left to Centre-right parties in opposition to Law and Justice (no far-right, though they voted against Morawiecki).
Today the new Prime Minister had his exposé, and the new cabinet was formed. Poland enters a new era.
My comment might have been overly long and dramatic, but for majority of Poles this is an extremely important event, representing an end to 8 long years of indignity, corruption, nepotism, dismantling of democracy, trampling of our liberties and so, so much more evil.
So yeah. Hope I didn’t bore you to death.
And if you’re Polish yourself, and have voted in the elections:
It is a bad thing if you live in a country with a robust social system that is paid for through taxes and a below-replacement birth rate.
Like, we don’t need “more” people, but we need to keep the population stable to make sure the disabled and elderly can live well. Because someone has to bear the cost, and we can’t all be Norwegian.
What are our freedoms doing in Kuwait? (lemmy.world)
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What are rough bricks called ?, I specifically want to know the term to lookup so I can find rough brick 𝗧𝗘𝗫𝗧𝗨𝗥𝗘 on Google instead of the smooth ones. (lemmy.world)
Edited the title to make it clear
A language lost to time (lemmy.world)
News (lemmy.world)
Author: εunnie
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The future of AI in Personalized Medicine Breakthroughs (lemmy.world)
Let them haz cake! (lemmy.world)
The ole switcharoo (lemmy.world)
Check mate atheists (lemmy.world)
Polish farmers end blockade of Ukraine border crossing (www.theguardian.com)
Ukraine says movement of lorries restored after suspension of protest, but truckers’ blockades of three other crossings continue...
This would be a nice temperature for Easter, not for Christmas Eve. (sh.itjust.works)
14°C = 57°F
2 women killed in Israeli attack on Holy Family parish in Gaza (www.vaticannews.va)
The Israeli military on Saturday entered the compound of the Holy Family Catholic Parish in Gaza, shooting at anyone leaving the church....
Couldn't remember Caillou's name. (sh.itjust.works)
Poland’s new government sacks state TV, radio and news bosses (www.theguardian.com)
The new Polish government has gutted the top management of public television, making good on a campaign promise to reform a broadcaster that functioned as a mouthpiece of its rightwing populist predecessor, but also prompting criticism of their methods from some quarters....
Far-right Polish MP uses fire extinguisher to put out Hanukkah candles after Donald Tusk speaks out against xenophobia – Europe live (www.theguardian.com)
Mysterious shipwreck measuring over 200 feet long found at bottom of Baltic Sea (www.cbsnews.com)
Donald Tusk becomes Poland's prime minister with the mission of improving European Union ties (apnews.com)
Donald Tusk, a leader of a centrist party, returned as Poland’s prime minister for the first time in nearly a decade after a vote in parliament on Monday, paving the way for a new pro-European Union government following eight years of stormy national conservative rule....
You can’t even pay people to have more kids (www.vox.com)
These countries tried everything from cash to patriotic calls to duty to reverse drastically declining birth rates. It didn’t work....