It’s pretty clear they were good buddies and his “just trying to raise money for charity” story doesn’t add up.
Someone like Gates has a massive selection of potential fundraising sources, if there is anyone in the world who can “pick and choose” in such matters, it’s Bill Gates.
Damn, not a good sign for humanity.
Smartphones have de facto become commoditized and people are still buying into the “accessable status” PR program from Apple.
This is just posturing on the part of Trump. He is too much of a narcissist and degenerate to have any kind of strategy with respect to the religious nutcases that make up the Iranian regime.
However, some senior bankers and executives in Davos, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they saw the response from European leaders to Trump’s moves as emotional rather than pragmatic. Two suggested the continent needed to look beyond the way the U.S. president delivers his message and have a negotiation.
“But they won’t even want to have that conversation, because they’re so offended by the style. And so what you have in Europe is a very, very, delicate balance of a continent that cannot move together,” one senior banker told Reuters.
Completely disconnect from reality. Trump is a degenerate, what kind of negotiations can you have with a degenerate?
It read does like he is talking to a 5 year old.
I doubt American society’s reputation will recover within the next 20-30 years. And I was in my mid-teens when they invaded Iraq and I am aware of global attitudes towards the US during the Vietnam war.
This is a whole different level of regressiveness.
I hate how western news service constantly quote the russian “opposition” and spread fake narrative such as the following:
“Peace is now an almost universal desire in Russian society. There was an upsurge of hope with the entrance of the Trump administration: An end of the war was finally in sight, but this hope did not materialize,” Schulmann said, saying that she believes Russian society took a psychological hit.
This is false and it is backed up preference falsification adjusted research (i.e. you can’t claim that “they are all afraid”).
Schulmann does not even recognize the annexation of Crimea and the invasion of Donbas as a war (or a big deal).
12 years, not 4. The russian invasion of Ukraine began in 2014 with the invasion of Crimea.
No electricity at all from 8:30 am to sometime around 9 pm (sometimes a lot later). If you live on higher floor, no heat or water either since the pumps don’t work without electricity.
The russians tried something similar in previous winters, but all three of them were very mild. It’s going to be around -15 for weeks on end.
All countries need to develop a strategic plan to get rid of all American products and services. I am not saying it has to happen in one day, but step by step.
Americans are unlikely to address corruption any time soon. The centre-right party leadership are too corrupt themselves and most of the party base is too well off to risk taking down the oligarchs.
I would argue this is a good thing. The data is being used anyways, at least they get some money to keep the project going.
The owner, Wikimedia Foundation, is a non-profit.
This should have started in Feb 2022, if not earlier. That being said, better late then never.
Good for Indonesia and Malaysia! Too bad European countries don’t have the guts to do this!
US is going full speed ahead with the debasement of all their institutions.
The flip side of this is that more and more countries/people are going to come to the conclusion that the Emperor has no clothes! That’s a good thing in the medium to long-term.
NYT is sensationalizing the political component of Budanov’s assignment. There is some truth to it, but NYT is overplaying it. Zelensky still has massive political capital and not only because of the “rally around the flag” effect as the sociologists call it.
Budanov is from the new school of Ukrainian military, he was just 28 when the russian invaded Crimea in 2014, I would almost prefer if he stayed with the military and they found a (relatively) young technocrat for the chief of staff position.
Al-Jazeera is a much better source for topics on Syria.
The russians are not going to buy Taco’s bluff.
They know he is a lazy coward and a significant portion of the MAGA people only care about enabling crime and corruption.
US legislative authorities and US society cannot be trusted.
It’s like dealing with criminals. Not all of US society of course, but support for criminality is not limited to the far right, a significant portion of US nihilists and centre right also support corruption and believe crime is good.
And before you accuse me of being uncharitable, consider the following:
Mark Zuckerburg and Meta were found to promote fraud and criminality on their platform to net $16 B for them in 2024 alone. Note that Meta’s own PR goons didn’t really deny this.
Will the majority of US centre right voters put pressure on their party to address this criminality (arrests, full asset seizure, winding down of criminal organizations)?
Or will they continue to enable such behaviour?
We all know what the answer is. :)
From my experience living in the US, the American centre-right is not going to address the root cause of the rise of oligarchy. It hits a bit too close to home for the party leadership and their voters are too well off (on a relative global basis) and too risk averse to support targeting corruption in a substansive manner.
That being said, tactical voting is a sane and reasonable approach. I’ve done it many times in my own country.