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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.

Nonsense, looking at quickly googled stats for Poland I see in top 10 mostly Polish artists and "artists". One list where foreign one was top 1 she was Canadian.

This user has blocked you. You are still welcome to reply but you will be held to a higher standard of civility than you would be otherwise

WTF? Why I am going to be held to a higher standard of civility just because @some mass blocks everyone?

At the old place abuse of the blocking feature was itself a moddable offense; I’ve never seen anyone actually get modded for responding to @some despite him blocking literally everyone for no apparent reason. Stands to reason that that form letter may not be 100% literal in this particular case.

I wonder what the site looks like to him, with so many comments gone. (I assume that's what it does, I've never blocked someone myself.)

Comments are hidden but it seems that trace of comment is still visible (I just decided to block @some in a matching response, especially as I remember repeated strong claims completely mismatching reality, likely they made more similar but not on topics I know well)

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