Politics

Poland stokes fears of leaving EU in 'Polexit' By Adam Easton BBC News, Warsaw Published 21 hours ago https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-58840076 Tensions between Poland and the Eu escalates and the BBC article examines the possible eventual outcome>

For three days now Melbourne has been under attack from extreme right wing ratbag elements that have caused much damage and plenty of disgust among normal Aussies. The core of these riots while having some legitimacy, have been hijacked by various extreme elements that have like leaches, jumped on the bandwagon, in a belief of achieving some sort of result or victory. In fact, thankfully the opposite has happened. The legitimate core involved tradies and members of the CMFEU union and a mandatory vaccination order. On the first day after trashing their head office, many were found not to be union members, plus the fact that the leaders of the union, do support mand…

Is he? Bad genetics? He shakes hands with people during pandemic crisis and gets covid later. Makes a big drama that in british english you whitchcraft instead of ping pong?! Generally says stupid things which its ridiculed in youtube videos. Mostly he stupid answers about the actual crisis that the UK has ensured me this guy is not intelligent!

America has seen yet another merciless killing of an unarmed person of color at the hands of police. This time though, it seems different. In the past, even with video tape, things happened quickly. An officer overreacted and shot an unarmed person. Sometimes the situation was ambiguous, sometimes not. But there was always a sense in previous police killings that somehow the officer had slipped up; gotten it wrong. Call it a lack of training, tunnel vision, PTSD - whatever term describes a person who under situations of extreme stress cannot act in good judgement and makes a fatal error, costing an innocent person their life. But George Floyd's killing wa…

Michael Pascoe is an Aussie financial journalist and commentator, keynote speaker and facilitator...... https://thenewdaily.com.au/finance/2021/10/01/michael-pascoe-us-democracy-threat/ COVID-19 is not our biggest problem. Neither is China. Or even climate change. (As a species we know what we have to do and we can do it, if we want to.) No, the biggest threat is one that would make those three challenges worse: The death of American democracy – the US sliding into an autocracy, becoming a crony capitalist, para-fascist state. It may seem an incredible claim, but there’s a solid and frightening argument that the outlook for American democracy has deter…

I think we need a president who is optimistic and inspiring. A president who advocates for stronger social programs and the rebuilding of infrastructure. They would try to inspire people to support science, engineering, and space exploration. They would also speak out against authoritarianism and tyranny of all kinds. They would unite America and it's allies against China and Russia. If there is still a war on drugs they would at least decriminalize marijuana. While doing all of this they would do anything they can to stop climate change. And they are an idealist who believes humanity should strive for the "Star Trek future". Is this an unreasonable standard for…

Remark of UK becoming a US State has come up way too often elsewhere and made me want to sit down and figure out the scenarios for a British State or States in the US. Numbers are only rough figures based on public data and tools, but feel they are reasonably representative. Republic and Territory The Monarchy Abdicates or is Abolished Republic of Britain is briefly created Republic requests annexation by the United States Annexation bill passes North East Territory is created. Assumed: North Ireland chooses to remain a territory or chooses to separate Statehood Scenario A - Upon successful application,…

I have started a new thread for this as it raises an important interesting question that is not really 'Science News' Suppose beecee's dream is realised and one government or several governments research and develop really good hydrogen technology. Who benefits ? Big business ? The people ?

Faster than expected (which might be a good thing regardless of the fact that an oppressive regime is taking over, if they were going to take over anyway) https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2021/8/15/in-pictures-taliban-fighters-enter-afghan-presidential-palace Reminds me a bit of Saigon, and a bit of Havana. Hopefully retributions will be minimal and the new version of the Taliban will be a little more progressive than the old one. ...and foreign militaries manage to avoid aggravating it, in favour of political and economic pressures. After 20 years though...we lost. Hopefully we come to terms with that, and not try to turn it around.

If they put up fencing around the Capitol again, that will prevent the Trumpers from entering restricted Capitol property. Instead the Capitol police should set up an ambush with no fences. Warn them that they will be arrested if they enter restricted grounds. When they do enter restricted grounds, they are surrounded by thousands of cops who pop out of nowhere, zip tie, and arrest everyone who defied the warning.

Biden said he want to find out does Taliban really want peace or not just before Taliban attacked the Afghanistan national army. LMAO, hahah They also said they want to stay in Afghanistan after 31/08/2021, hahahhahah, You made the deal to leave Afghanistan on 31/08/2021 it is like they say they want to stay in a hotel for one more day without pay. They also ask those Asian countries to open their board. Uzbekistan said it will not accept any refugee, they must be too polite, so they do not tell the American and EU politicians to Shut-UFU. + Korean, China, Japan never accept one single refugee.

In the US, apparently there is a new tactic in place to restrict or even abolish abortions. In a way it is a clever way to skirt litigation and basically banning abortion by threatening folks performing it, rather than banning the procedure itself. https://www.vox.com/2021/8/31/22650303/supreme-court-abortion-texas-sb8-jackson-roe-wade-greg-abbott

After the Russia elections Trump called Putin to congratulate him on having the powers of a dictator. "I'm proud of you Vlad, I would like the powers you have!" We would not have known about this if the Kremlin did not report it and some details were not leaked to the press. After Xi of China takes power for life, Trump remarked that was a good idea. "I'm proud of you Xi, I would like to have power for life!" We can only assume Trump envies Kim Jong-Un for his absolute power, as a "smart cookie". The House Intelligence Committee reached the conclusion that although Russia interfered with the US elections, it was NOT in favor or Trump. That is at odds with a…

I'm not sure whether many people are aware of this on SFN but most Muslim countries are poor and generally just doesn't compete that well in the global economy, apart from a few exceptions. Why are so many Muslim countries poor countries? What is the likely root-cause of this? What does everybody think?

In 2016, many Americans promised that they would move to Canada if Donald Trump won. Very few of them followed through on that promise. Among the ones who didn't, a popular claim was the notion that "Canada's too cold;" a phrase that came to mind this week because Lytton, British Columbia, recently surpassed Las Vegas, Nevada as far as record heat goes. I presume, if people believed Las Vegas wasn't hot enough for them, it wouldn't be profitable to air condition those casinos? Or was the idea less that the maximum temperatures aren't hot enough, and more that the minimum temperatures are too cold? If so, what of the fact that Vancouver,…

Years ago, at least in the context of Internet culture, it used to be taken as a given that being against vaccines was a leftist thing. But lately, amidst the deluge of right-wing anti-vaxxers like Tucker Carlson and Lauren Boebert, the myth that the vaccine is bad for you has been challenged aplenty, while the even more unmistakably disproven myth that anti-vax narratives were inherently a left-wing thing has been virtually ignored. How come there are no repercussions for that sort of myth? How come the people responsible for it get to walk away from this as if they hadn't just been caught in a lie? Now I'm not saying this…

In my retirement I have lots of time to kill, so I wanted to see Rush Limbaugh’s reaction to the attack on the Capitol on January 6th. His entire show for January 7th was available on Youtube for several weeks, but it is gone now. I listened to it a few times, taking notes. Then I completely transcribed the first 20 minutes because I want to understand Trumpers. Rush started his show on the 7th by saying that he was having a “hard time” (from his cancer and he died about 6 weeks later). Rush was a major factor in Trump winning in 2016, and 74.1 million votes in 2020, because of his large radio audience. Rush began his 1-7-2021 show exalting himself, repeating as…

Yesterday, 5-12-2021, Rand Paul called Dr. Fauci a liar about what happened in the Wuhan lab. Fauci needs to explain how he didn't lie to Rand Paul. Would someone please bring a microphone to Dr. Fauci? "Sen. Rand Paul said that Dr. Anthony Fauci lied Tuesday when he said that the National Institute of Health (NIH) did not fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology before the coronavirus outbreak." "I would say we don’t know for certain [where the virus came from], but I would say what Dr. Fauci said yesterday was verifiably false," Paul said. "He said no NIH money went to the Wuhan Institute for gain of function. Well, the main doctor there,…

https://news.gallup.com/poll/352397/democratic-republican-confidence-science-diverges.aspx I wonder if that 45% ticks upwards when their child needs medicine.

Wasn't part of the point of sex-segregating sports to make sure it's primarily a test of athletic skill, rather than of skill at not being distracted by one's opponent? Is it possible the introduction of athletes who are still anatomically of the opposite sex might make their opponents subconsciously realize this, and in turn, be a confounding factor in the extent to which it's about athletic skills?

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-57773010 About 50 Republicans who voted against accepting the result of the General election,it seems. On balance is this a good developments or will it fuel what seems like a grievance culture? Seems like desperate times for Democracy in USA.So vital the anti democratic forces do not get another foothold in the institutions of power in the coming elections . Can they be headed off at the pass? According to the story "Toyota has said it will halt donations to members of the US Congress who voted against certification of President Biden's election victory."

Standard academic and research establishments are becoming increasingly political. Top journals like Nature, Science, Lancet etc. all support the same political parties and ideologies. One example is Nature supporting Biden here: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02852-x. Can one trust the objectivity (core principle required for hard science research) of Nature after it supports one political party over another? Nature also constantly protects China as if it is a propaganda mouthpiece for China rather than a scientific magazine. It says that we should not debate the lab leak hypothesis of coronavirus because that annoys China and we need China at all costs …

Is this some attempt on Israel's part to stifle dissemination of news in Gaza territory.... cutting the area off from reliable external information to the Gazans?

There has been a big push lately to "defund the police". One problem that I see is that the police were never funded properly in the first place. Yes, they are given ridiculous and unnecessary amounts of military surplus vehicles (which they shouldn't have), but that actual salary for a full time officer is around 55,000 a year - quite low considering the cost of living these days and what their job demands. (Source:https://www.careerexplorer.com/careers/police-officer/salary/) The issue I see is police are woefully undertrained. Jocko Willik, a retired Navy SEAL, was on a podcast recently and pointed out that for a 6 month deployment in Afghanistan, the Navy SEA…

The World Health Organization might be talking tough on China now, but back when it would have counted, they were obviously pandering to them. What, if anything, is the use of an "international" organization that can be influenced by any especially powerful country, let alone one with a track record of cover-ups, in ways that get hundreds of thousands of people killed? Is it to "investigate" these countries? Why trust an "investigation" in which the suspects let investigators in willingly, presumably believing they've already covered up all the evidence they need to cover up? Why can't each country just send spies to gather intel on each other country, and then let the pu…