Politics Thread!

[F-ZeroOne]

You can always trust Australia to say out loud what everyone else is thinking:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-n ... nce-a-knob

He has apologised, but I mean, its pretty much literally stating what most of the world is already thinking. Australia has a deal with the US and UK to build and maintain nuclear submarines in Australia, given how thin-skinned the current US administration is at the moment Australia may have to go back to their original plan and get the French in instead.

Ukraine has an official donation page if you want to put something towards defence, medical or humanitarian aid. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post the link here?

[F-ZeroOne]

Ooh, hes a right little charmer isn't he?

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... e-comments

Fine, he might not have been referring to the UK and France by "some random country that hasn't fought a war in the past forty years". No, but some of those "random countries" have had past experience of fighting Russia...

[Mat]

Ukraine has an official donation page if you want to put something towards defence, medical or humanitarian aid. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post the link here?

You posting this was enough for me to find it, so I chucked $50 their way.

[F-ZeroOne]

Thats good to know, thank you on behalf of Ukraine! (not that I'm any kind of spokesperson for them, as their President proved they can more than speak for themselves).

[Harlequin]

Is there any reason why we should not share the address of the Ukrainian Government's official donation site?

[zip accident]

Things will change a bit if there's a swing at the midterms

That's what I'm saying. I can't see there being meaningful midterms, if there are even midterms at all. A lot of what's going on is aimed at making those elections moot.

Removal of birthright citizenship, Executive Order 14160 of January 20, 2025 - "Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship", allows them to remove vast swathes of probably non-trump voters from the electoral roll. Rescinding Executive Order 14019 of March 7, 2021 "Promoting Access to Voting" allows the government to require in-place voting, which can be used to reduce the number of voters from specific areas physically able to vote (think 1 polling station for an entire area), allow in-place harassment of voters (Executive Order 14149 of January 20, 2025 - "Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship" along with a couple of others basically means his brownshirtsredhatscan stand outside polling stations and nobody can stop them). Executive Order 14152 of January 20, 2025 - "Holding Former Government Officials Accountable for Election Interference and Improper Disclosure of Sensitive Governmental Information" is all about punishing people for doing their job and ensuring elections are fair. And so on. There will be more to come.

In the long term, Trump is dead, as are we all.

I'm not seeing a Hitler, Mussolini, Mao or Stalin figure in all this. Trump is old, Bannon is terminally scruffy (nothng wrong with that, but nazis hate it), Musk is new to the ideology, and I don't know about Vance.

If the USA is going under as Tufty suggests, and it's horribly plausible to me at this point that it might, the Ukraine is very small beer indeed.

[PFVA]

Things are changing very fast these days:

According to several US Media, Newsweek is one of them, Zelensky wants to re-negotiate after the Americans announced a freeze in the military aid to Ukraine. They even froze what was already en route:

"Our meeting in Washington, at the White House on Friday, did not go the way it was supposed to," Zelensky wrote. "It is regrettable that it happened this way. It is time to make things right. We would like future cooperation and communication to be constructive

[KlaxonCow]

Why tariffs logically don't work as Trump suggests they will.



Plus there is the obvious problem that if only one country is imposing the tariffs, then other countries will simply by-pass that country. Canada and Canadian businesses have already been courting alternative suppliers from the EU and elsewhere.

So this really is only going to hit American importers, not non-American exporters. As they can export elsewhere. They can export at the same price as they do for every other country... and the importer has to handle the extra tax.

If every country had such tariffs against every other country, then it's a more defensible position. But America going alone with tariffs, while the rest of the planet doesn't? Trump is just making America more expensive to do business with. So don't do business with America.

Sure, the loss of a market of 300 million people is not great. But Europe is a market of 500 million people instead - that'll do, while we wait for sanity to return to the New World again.

[F-ZeroOne]

Is there any reason why we should not share the address of the Ukrainian Government's official donation site?

Thanks, just wasn't sure if this site had any rules about linking to things essentially asking for money. Probably just worrying about nothing as usual. And yes, I also have put my money where my... typing?... is.

[F-ZeroOne]

Couple videos, first one as a link as not sure how to post "shorts", basically two hours of the worlds biggest narcissist compressed to 60 seconds. If only that worked for his term of office...

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Oyo0fJeGjDc

And then this one; short version: America may be about to f**k America over:

[KlaxonCow]

first one as a link as not sure how to post "shorts"

Same way as ordinary videos with the video code inside youtube tags.

They just look a bit crap as they don't fit the landscape player, but that's just "shorts" for you.

(Indeed, every short can be watched in the regular player by changing "short" in the URL to "watch". This is how "shorts" embed just fine, other than being the wrong orientation.)

[F-ZeroOne]

Thanks, I did try that but it didn’t seem to work. Maybe I mistyped something.

[KlaxonCow]

The theory that Trump is employing the "mad bastard strategy" gains more ground.

Because he's now suspended the tariffs on Mexico for another month, after talks with Mexico's leader. Who, no doubt, showered King Trump with gifts and concessions to gain that suspension.

And so the "mad bastard" cycle repeats.

Mad King Trump threatens something ridiculous. But he's a mad bastard, so he might genuinely do it.

Everybody panics. So leaders court Mad King Trump over the phone - "we'll give you this, we'll give you that, we'll concede all these things to you...just don't carry out your mad threats".

And Mad King Trump waves his hand. "I will grant you a one month reprieve... bring me better gifts next month".

Trump concedes absolutely nothing. But just by acting like a mad bastard who really, really might actually do it, everyone concedes everything he wants.

Again and again. Basically, it's a gangster extortion racket. Keep paying Mad King Trump his "protection" money every month, and he won't send round the boys with the baseball bats.

"That's a nice country you've got there. It would be a shame if something were to happen to it."

[Harlequin]

One thing one can say about The Don, when he says he is going to do something you can be damn sure he might do it, possibly, sometime, or not.

[zip accident]

The theory that Trump is employing the "mad bastard strategy" gains more ground.

Because he's now suspended the tariffs on Mexico for another month, after talks with Mexico's leader. Who, no doubt, showered King Trump with gifts and concessions to gain that suspension.

And so the "mad bastard" cycle repeats.

Mad King Trump threatens something ridiculous. But he's a mad bastard, so he might genuinely do it.

Everybody panics. So leaders court Mad King Trump over the phone - "we'll give you this, we'll give you that, we'll concede all these things to you...just don't carry out your mad threats".

And Mad King Trump waves his hand. "I will grant you a one month reprieve... bring me better gifts next month".

Trump concedes absolutely nothing. But just by acting like a mad bastard who really, really might actually do it, everyone concedes everything he wants.

Again and again. Basically, it's a gangster extortion racket. Keep paying Mad King Trump his "protection" money every month, and he won't send round the boys with the baseball bats.

"That's a nice country you've got there. It would be a shame if something were to happen to it."

OTOH, it might be early stage Alzheimer;s.