You are the first person i came across referring to them as “Middle East religions”.

Fair enough :) I’ll take that as an apology for having labeled me as racists for no reason.

For future reference, you might also hear “desert religions” (yeah, it’s not like all the deserts in the world are there) or “the three monotheist religions” (yeah, I know those are not the only ones): it means the same thing.

Then again what became of Christian in various places of the world has little to do with the region.

Yeah but the view on prostitution is shared (by and large) in the three religions we are talking about: it’s not a Christian-only thing and it’s not something that developed in Europe alone (well, as far as I know: we are still commenting on what I referred to as an assumption - ie. I’m not 100% sure about this).

Or do you consider modern beer to be Iraqi?

I could certainly say “IDK where beer comes from, I assume it’s from Mesopotamia?” though?

I’ll leave it to you to re-read what I wrote originally and find the flaw if this last comment of yours.

In reality, I guess I just made you angry… I’m Sorry about that, but “racist” is one of the very few things I don’t allow people to call me, so I took off my gloves.

seems racist

Wow. Please define “racist” for me, and show how it has anything to do with religion.

How the heck do you get the idea that Swedish sexual morals would be defined by people thousands of kilometres away?

Ok, you’ve just misunderstood me (no, this time it really wasn’t me being unclear, sorry).

The “middle east religions” are Judaism, Christianity and Islam (I listed them in chronological order, please don’t be triggered again). Is the expression not in use where you live? Even so, how the hell did you think I could mean Islam? Why would I do it in such a roundabout way and using plural?

IDK where this fixation in regulating other people’s sexual life comes from, I assume it’s from the Middle-east religions?

When asked the question “who is the victim in this supposed crime?” they will tell you it’s the exploited women (is there male prostitution? IDK), but those are supposed victims (even if 99.99% of prostitutes were forced into it, you’d still have to prove exploitation in each specific case - that’s how justice works in every other matter except this one). They won’t be able to explain (if not with, often made-up, statistical arguments) why they don’t treat women (and men) that are exploited in different businesses the same way (think, migrants forced to work in slavelike conditions in agriculture).

The sad truth is, those moralists are just more interested in dictating other people’s sexual behaviour than they are interested in human rights.

It’s worth mentioning that, besides the various semi-bans on prostitution (which do irritate me, but whom - in all honesty - I can live with), this unhealthy sexual fixation of our societies is what gifts us the marginalization (when it’s not persecution) of LGBT people.

We might need some kind of tool to ensure EU governments stay loyal to the EU before external powers.

If possible, it should be something less extreme than forcibly expelling countries from the EU… but even that would be acceptable IMHO.

I agree 100%, and 100% the US don’t give a shit.

The article is very diplomatic about it, but this is Melony attempt to cover up the failure of her whole Albania plan by rebranding it as something that she may then call a success and be believed (well, by her diehard supporters at least).

Yes, but will Trump and Putin chill at a pool and - most importantly - will there be a golden statue of Trump and bearded scantily clothed dancers?

Jokes aside - this is coming from bonkers people who think authority and stubbornness are enough to get things done, which may to a point apply in internal affairs (where there’s an established body of laws that gives the president that authority), but will not work in geopolitics.

Also, making sure you know the least bit about what you are talking about before opening your mouth and letting your ugly thoughts out wouldn’t harm: comparing nowadays Ukraine to WWII Berlin just shows you don’t know anything about (at least one of) the two.

There are precedents. In October 1979, Paul Volcker, newly appointed as chair of the Federal Reserve, drove up interest rates to a remarkable 13% in a bid to tackle inflation, later raising them to 17%.

Back then the problem was rampaging inflation and the (by-the-book) cure was raising interest rates to drive it down.

Nowadays US inflation is not an issue (IIRC it’s like 2% or 3%) and tariffs are gonna bring it up in a confused effort to… rebuild a manufacturing industry? (I’m not sure that’s the goal - it’s hard to say what “great again” means precisely).

In what way would 1979 be a precedent?

Anyway… yes, assuming Trump’s goal is to have more manufacturing in the US, tariffs will “work” - the point is how much that’s gonna cost (in quality of life, not dollars) and who’s gonna pay that price.

Good. Let’s copy that

It feels like 50% of the noise coming from there is flat-out lies, and the other 50% is bullshit instead.

One thing I didn’t get: besides the boring “witch hunt” narrative, is her stance that those people didn’t do work for RN or that it’s fine to use EU-paid personnel for her party in France?

Nah - let’s just use English and distort it to annoy UKers and USers(*) instead! :)

(*) those who notice

Will he appear like beetlejuice? Because I could go the The Hague and summon him.

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why though?

This has nothing to do with war or peace: the whole thing (back from when the phone call was announced last week) is propaganda.

Here’s what’s worth IMHO:

1. Putin can continue his war, but today nobody wrote that he is cold towards the peace process.
2. Trump can triumphally (trumpally?) announce that he is making great progress (the best progress) towards “peace”.

This one is on me: now that I re-read what I wrote, my wording could have been better/clearer. Sorry about that.

I don’t know whether to downvote or upvote this… on the one hand it contains some interesting insights and we need to talk more about what Putin is trying to do to us, but on the other hand the video is very US-centric and oversimplifies everything to seemingly arbitrary bullet-points.

For example, the video divides Russian propaganda in “for Russians” and “for West” as if the Kremlin didn’t have a specific strategy for each and every western nation and ignored non-western states altogether (but of course “for West” really means “for the US” and the rest of the world doesn’t matter).