AndreasHG

I appreciate your sense of humor. With regards to Trump's yet to come wins, the future is uncertain. With 10,000 Optimus being employed by the end of this year in Tesla factories around the world and up for sales starting in 2026 (according to Elon Musk who probably forgot to inform Trump about what the future has in store), nothing is more uncertain today than the future of blue-collar workers, while white-collar jobs are already endangered by AI. It takes years to relocate the production of high-value products which rely on complex supply chains and expensive assets (I am not talking about toys here). That means companies shall invest now to start reaping the first profits from their investments under a new administration. American consumers are required to start paying higher prices now, with the prospect of perhaps being able to access better jobs, Optimus and AI permitting, under a new administration. And the Trump administration will be plagued by inflation, tumbling stock prices and recession for its entire duration, to the uncertain benefit of the next one. In the meanwhile, Musk's Optimus will progress and there is a chance it will render manual labor a thing of the past, while AI will put an end to white-collar jobs. The future is uncertain, but of one thing I am absolutely certain: if Trump continues like this, the future of MAGA and of the GOP looks extremely bleak. -

Hamas is designated a terrorist organization. So no, it is not discriminatory to kick out its supporters. It is just plain stupid to let them in.

Just published by a number of news outlets... "Trump threatens large scale sanctions to stop Russia ‘pounding Ukraine’" It's a win-win: head America wins, tail Russia loses. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/03/07/copy-of-copy-of-copy-of-copy-of-copy-of-russia-ukraine-zelensky-putin-war-latest-news528/ https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-threatens-russia-sanctions-tariffs-ceasefire-peace-deal/story?id=119551657 https://flvoicenews-com.webpkgcache.com/doc/-/s/flvoicenews.com/trump-threatens-russia-with-sanctions-and-tariffs-over-pounding-ukraine-in-war/

LOL 4 days old news, superseded by Trump's speech to the Congress. And just for you to know... ..."Germany to Block U.S.-Russia Nord Stream 2 Deal" (just google it). To whom are you going to sell your oil and gas? To the USA which is already the world largest producer and Russia main competitor? Or do you seriously think that Europe is going to buy Russian oil and gas again to spite Trump? You can shag your Russian oil & gas where the sun never shines. That's the best use you can make of it.

Keep on dreaming... This is what Trump said in his Speech to Congress: "Meanwhile, Europe has sadly spent more money buying Russian oil and gas than they’ve spent on defending Ukraine, by far." This sentence has been conveniently ignored by the Russian news outlets (which ignore any news which may be bad for Putin) but we are fortunate to live in democratic countries and have access to a free press. Therefore, this statement was not lost on us. Trump is saddened that Europe spent money on Russian oil and gas which ooze Ukrainian blood. Russia's better be ready to endure sanctions for the foreseeable future, and at least till its murderous president will stay in power. Слава Україні.

I agree with what Trump said: Europeans still buy too much cheap oil & gas from Russia. We bought more Russian O&G in dollars, than the value of the whole support we gave to Ukraine. We should stop buying from Russia and buy American oil & gas instead, despite it being more expensive, to keep the world free and screw murderous Putin and his criminal acolytes.

First, this was before COVID, when North Korea was coming off decades of relative openness. Secondly, this was in the capital Pyongyang, which is famously built and maintained to a completely different and much better standard than any other North Korean city and is less likely to embarrass the regime. Thirdly, the North Koreans living in the capital, far from being "normal" people, are notoriously the most reliable and loyal to the regime. At the slightest hint of infidelity, they are immediately deported with their families away from Pyongyang, where a life of hardship and misery awaits them. In Pyongyang the regime runs no risk of being embarrassed by the population. Lastly, in the world there is no lack of idiots who, even when faced with the evidence that a regime represents the absolute evil, believe they are dealing with an absolutely normal regime. Names of people who fall into this category and who come to mind right now are the Scottish academic and Marxist, and Khmer Rouge apologist, James Alexander Malcolm Caldwell (who deserves the Nobel Prize for Idiocy, should one ever be awarded) and Eric Hobsbawm, a British Marxist historian and lifelong apologist for the Soviet Union, whom Putin would surely appreciate.

I'm eager to see how the announced 25% tariff on goods imported to the US from the European Union plays out. Why? Well, there are a lot of misconceptions surrounding the EU, and many of them caused by the fact that facts and figures related to the EU are often reported only by individual country. Let's try to have a holistic and more realistic vision of the economic relationship between the EU and the USA. First, the truth is that EU has a negative current account balance with the United States. The EU imports more from the United States than it exports. A lot of its imports are services generated by the like of Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet, Netflix, Airbnb, Amazon, X, etc.. Services are the "new economy" and are an area in which American companies excel. But the US current account surplus with the EU is something that the Trump administration loves to ignore, because it does not resound with its electoral base composed mainly of blue-collar and poorly educated people, who are not typically employed by Tech companies. If the EU imposed tariffs on these services in retaliation to the US tariff, it would spell trouble for the US and especially for Trump's big donors, those who queued up to donate large sums for his inauguration day. Second, a significant part of the EU trade surplus is fictitious. Little Ireland is the EU's second-largest exporter to the United States not far behind Germany and well ahead of Italy, and pharmaceuticals represent one of its two largest export (the other is Airbus). However, the fact is that most of these “EU” exports are shipments of pharmaceutical drugs manufactured in India. American pharmaceutical companies set up manufacturing plants in the subcontinent and export their drugs to the United States through their Irish subsidiaries, which act as convenient, tax-advantaged intermediaries. The drugs don't even set foot in European ports, as they are uprooted directly from India to the US West Coast to save costs. Introducing a 25% import tax on these drugs would cost Irish taxpayers almost nothing and would heavily penalize American pharmaceutical companies, their Indian subsidiaries, their employees and those who invested in these companies. Furthermore, the EU as a whole is by far the largest creditor of the US Treasury and the largest holder of US dollar-denominated assets. The EU is a market economy and there is no Chinese Communist Party that can whisper to local financial institutions to boycott American securities in retaliation for a tariff, trusting that the suggestion will be implemented in a disciplined way. However, the EU has a central financial regulator (the ECB - European Central Bank) on which the national central banks depend, and which has a certain regulatory power. I therefore can't imagine what would happen to the interest rates paid by the US Treasury if the EU slowed down its purchases, which are currently running at a pace of just under $100 billion a month. And let me conclude with one final consideration: Trump is right when he says that the EU is a tough nut to crack. The EU has no sense of urgency. Threatening to impose a 25% tariff on its products does not ignite the rush to close a deal that we saw with Mexico and Canada a month ago. Any agreement requires the approval of the 27 member countries and their parliaments. A process that takes months or even years to complete. It is built-in stonewalling by design. And for Trump, accustomed to putting pressure on his partners to bend them to his will, in the belief that, by urging them to act in a rush, he can obtain more favorable concessions, this is like being 'screwed'. And being 'screwed' is exactly as he described the situation in which he finds himself.

This is leadership!

Anyone who has rationally studied Geo-politics from even a marginally neutral vantage knows exactly that are Russians those who killed by far the highest number of Russians. None killed Russians like the Russian despots. Not Napoleon, not Hitler, and not even the Taliban. None inflicted pain, misery and suffering to Russians like your own leaders did to your people. And forgive the Ukrainians if they are tired of being dragged into the sewer, into which you happily and willingly slip at least once every generation. Putin himself is a criminal worthy of the gallows. But he deserves credit: he caused the death of more Russians than anyone else in his and my generation.

I see you are very familiar with the Russian trolls' practice of copying and pasting the "truth" as stated by Putin's propaganda machine. But even assuming my post is copied and pasted, which it isn't, would that make it any less true?

Evidently you only have access to Russian propaganda, or the ramblings released to the press by that imbecile who now sits in the White House. It is the Ukrainian constitution itself that establishes that, as long as martial law is lawfully in place, there will be no elections. And the constitution of Ukraine was approved long before Zelensky entered politics (the current Constitution of Ukraine was drafted and approved in 1996, when Zelensky was only 18 years old and was still a simple high school student). There is nothing unusual or exceptional in Ukraine's constitutional diktat. Several constitutions in Western countries do not allow elections to be held in times of war, states of emergency or martial law. During the First World War both the United Kingdom and Canada extended their parliamentary mandates (effectively delaying elections), while New Zealand postponed elections during the Second World War. Parliamentary elections in Israel have also been postponed due to conflict, for example during the Yom Kippur War in 1973. More recently, in 2023, local elections were postponed following the October 7 attacks. There are also a number of practical obstacles to holding elections in Ukraine right now: around a fifth of the country is currently occupied by Russia, millions of Ukrainians are displaced or serving on the front lines, and there are various security concerns. Russia has widely used the claim that Zelensky is illegitimate in its propaganda to discredit the Ukrainian government, based on the premise that Zelensky's first term was originally supposed to end on May 20, 2024. Expecting Zelensky to hold elections while the country is at war and under martial law, even though Ukraine's own constitution forbids it, is only evidence of Putin's contempt for the rule of law and of the abysmal ignorance of those who repeat and amplify his baseless claim.

You're wrong judging by the avatar and you're not just wrong about that. I am not Ukrainian, and I contributed my share to the "300 billion dollars" spent by the West to support Ukraine. Best money ever spent. Because there is no money better spent than that spent in defense of freedom and justice.

Unsurprising and typical of sociopaths. What sociopaths, who are incapable of human emotions, miss to understand is that this is not going to end up only in history books. It will be embedded in the hearts of each Ukrainian for generations. What sociopaths miss is that Russia gained in Ukraine approximately 47,000 sqm of territory, equivalent to only 0.71% on the total land mass Russia already possessed before the war started, suffered approximately 1,000,000 causalities, or 0.07% of its population, wrecked its economy in the process, and earned the enmity of 37 million Ukrainians for this and for the immediate future generations. It will take decades for Ukrainians to forget what was done to them. This is largely sufficient not only to demonstrate that Putin is a scoundrel and a criminal, but also an incompetent state leader. Beginning with the reign of Ivan the Terrible in the 16th century, Russia managed to expand at an incredible rate of 50 square miles per day, eventually covering 1/6 of the earth’s landmass. Catherine the Great alone expanded Russia's territory by more than 200,000 square miles (520,000 square kilometers), while Stalin added more than 800,000 sqm to the Soviet empire in Europe alone, with the complicity of Hitler (in 1939), and of Churchill and Roosvelt in 1945. Despite all the appearances and the imperial pretensions, Putin is a poor amateur compared to his predecessors.

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Thanks for following me.

Trump clearly lacks a plan or even the slightest of how to act, following his claims about Greenland and the Panama Canal. However, it must be acknowledged that the journalist question to Trump was specifically formulated to elicit the exact given by Trump and provoke indignation. It is well-known by now that asking Trump if he takes something off the table elicits an automatic negative response. All Trump wants is to be talked about on TV news and written about in newspapers. The more outrageous the action he is being asked to give up, the more likely he is to say he is seriously considering it. The only question that still remains unanswered is why such an idiot was elected president of the United States. I can help with that. The voters and the democratic opposition know the answer: they both deserve him.

I am pretty sure the place was not in South Korea.

Si vis pacem, para bellum. It was true 2000 years ago, and it is true also today.

Adult females and males wearing designer pijamas while going after their errands in Sukhumvit Asoke and Nana areas, mostly from China, but also Middle East and some from Thailand. It seems to be perfectly acceptable and even fashionable nowadays.

Same in Leroy Merlin and Praxis back in Europe.

Any place is full of cyber scammers. Cyber criminality knows no boundaries.

La Manche

Indeed. You may have finally understood at least one thing: In NATO we are peace loving people. That's why the pretense that Russia invaded Ukraine to defend itself from NATO is laughable. But there is something you Russian trolls will never understand: most of us, in NATO, have fulfilling lives. We are free to pursue our interests. We are free to travel, we are free to trade, we are not treated as outcasts outside of our country, and as slaves and cannon fodder in our own one. Unlike the majority of the Russian population, condemned to live miserable lives in quasi-medieval conditions, we don't see death on the battlefield as an appealing alternative to life. But make no mistake: my generation has been so strong it broke the backbone of the Soviet Union and sent it straight to the dustbin of history. And the current NATO generations will break the backbone of Putin's Russia and send it to where his criminal regime belongs: yes, you guess it right, the dustbin of history.

In fact, being anti-American is almost always true also when it comes to right-wing politicians in Europe. And not only right-wing politicians: In Europe, the communist parties and the former communist parties, now renamed in different ways, all share the same attitude towards Russia and the United States. In reality, both right-wing and left-wing politicians in Europe share the same contempt for the United States of America. Fico (Slovak Republic), Orban (Hungary), Georgescu (Romania), Weidel (Germany), Kickl (Austria), Salvini (Italy), etc., etc., support Russia not only because they are ready to throw Ukraine under bus, for the sake of an immediate peace agreement with Russia. What they really want is an end to sanctions and the restoration of imports of Russian oil and gas into the European Union, a cheap substitute for the higher priced oil and gas currently imported from other countries, the United States among others. They see the war in Ukraine as an American plot to force Europe to buy expensive American gas instead of cheap Russian gas. They are not interested in the fact that the EU exported goods worth 502 billion euros to the United States and imported goods worth 344 billion euros, creating a surplus of 158 billion euros. In 2021, the year before Russia's second invasion of Ukraine, the EU exported to Russia only one fifth of the goods exported to the USA (99 billion euros), importing 158.5 billion euros mainly oil and gas. The United States weights much more as a trade partner of the EU than Russia, and even than Russia, China and India combined. And the same goes for American exports to the European Union. The EU imported more than double from the United States than China in 2023, and much more than Russia, China and India combined in any given year. The narrative spread by far-right media in Europe, often financially supported by Russia and China, is that the future lies in the East. However, at least at the moment and for the foreseeable future, only a healthy trade relationship between the United States and Europe can ensure prosperity on both sides of the North Atlantic Ocean.