europe

https://archive.ph/SFKui

In case you missed it, a Saudi guy rammed a Christmas market with his car. Killed 5 people including one kid. Press inferrung that he's an "islamist" but he's well known for being anti-Muslim and pro AfD.

Getting some real Reichstag fire vibes from this.

European democracy at its finest. Cancel elections because the wrong candidate won using Russian interference as justification, then proceed to admit that there is no proof of any interference. 🤣

https://archive.ph/Q6mzS

Elon Musk is worth over 400 billion as of now but his thirst for power and wealth is infinite. We must stop Musk's evil agenda now because otherwise he will keep growing in power and wealth. I have a solution that will help with just a few minutes of your time. We must boycott Twitter and Tesla. For Twitter if you have a social media account you can easily send a DM to your friends saying why it's important to stop using Twitter. If you use Twitter yourself make a post saying you've moved on to Bluesky or whatever app you choose and that you won't be using Twitter anymore (except perhaps to convince more people to leave).

https://archive.ph/nAQLZ

https://archive.ph/YIdgb

https://archive.ph/CftqX

Back in 2011, as the political effects of the Great Recession were just beginning to appear, Peter Mair wrote about an emerging divide in European party systems between ‘parties which claim to represent, but don’t deliver, and those which deliver, but are no longer seen to represent.’ For Mair, ‘the growing gap between responsiveness and responsibility – or between what citizens might like governments to do and what governments are obliged to do – and the declining capacity of parties to bridge or manage that gap, lies at the heart of the disaffection and malaise that now suffuses democracy.’ He discussed the state of Irish politics in the wake of the 2008 crash as a paradigmatic illustration of this trend. ..

This counterproductive aversion to risk-taking reflects Sinn Féin’s general modus operandi since the last election, which has several European precedents from the past decade or so. If we look at Syriza after 2012, the SNP after 2014–15, Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour leadership after 2017 and now Sinn Féin after 2020, we can see a recurring pattern: a radical political force makes an unexpected breakthrough and then adopts a more cautious and conventional approach, seeking to present itself as a government-in-waiting (or in the case of Scotland, a state-in-waiting). Of course, this is exactly what the standard playbook would have told them to do in this situation. But the very same playbook would also have declared their initial advances to be inconceivable.

https://archive.ph/UiY9T