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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   1753 thread views

Transnational Thursday for January 11, 2024

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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European Union

From the golden age of decentralization of 1945, today we live in a times of local autonomy being on the decline. The latest example coming from the spat between Brussels and Budapest. Europeans may be familiar with various accusations the EU and western Europeans make against the present Hungarian government (corruption, lack of rule of law).

Such violations are used as the justification for removing franchise of the Hungarian representative in the EU Council(1). This move comes after Hungary vetoed the latest package of EU aid to Ukraine.

The exact paragraph Hungary is accused to be in breach of is Article 2 of Treaty on European Union. The article in question is vague and sufficiently motivated adversary could find a case against every EU member state, so the only conditions are political, which are specified in Article 7.

In more fun EU news, EU Commission member from Greece, has called upon the US singer Taylor Swift to promote voting in EU Parliament election among the subset of her fans which is allowed to vote in these election. That he called upon an American singer shows that Rammstein was right. For while there still exists Bulgarian, Finnish, and Portugese musicians, their reach is limited to their own countries, and even there US artists are more popular.

(1) The three major organs of EU are: EU Parliament (directly elected, comparable to the US House of Representatives, but with less populous states given slightly more seats per capita), EU Commission (comparable to the Government in a parliamentary system, with each country given a minister/secretary, but who doesn't represent and isn't supposed to act in the interest of the country which proposed her), and the EU Council (comparable to the US Senate before it's members were directly elected, the Council's members are heads of governments of EU member states).

For while there still exists Bulgarian, Finnish, and Portugese musicians, their reach is limited to their own countries, and even there US artists are more popular.

No, not really. The top 5 singles and albums for the last week in records in Finland, at least, were entirely Finnish artists (I don't know most of them but then again I'm almost 40), and this list of best-selling music artists is also in great majority Finnish. Taylor Swift is actually pretty invisible here, it's only due to the massive media attention in America making her a thing in the US that I've recently seen some mentions of her by locals.

Same thing in Sweden. Only one artist in the top 10 was non-swedish in 2023.

Top 10 2023:

  1. Ikväll Igen – Bolaget
  2. Kan Inte Gå – Bolaget
  3. Tattoo – Loreen
  4. Flowers – Miley Cyrus
  5. Rid Mig Som En Dalahäst – Rasmus Gozzi, Fröken Snusk
  6. Har Dig – Yasin
  7. Can't Tame Her – Zara Larsson
  8. Banan Melon Kiwi & Citron – Hooja
  9. Josefin – Albin Lee Meldau
  10. Hälsa Gud – Miss Li

Wait, are both #1 and #2 songs about liquor stores?

That's the artist. Both the songs are about being extremely drunk though..

To be clear though, I've not listened to any of the songs of the list even once until now except for the Loreen song during Eurovision.

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