Ben Matthews

It’s good they exposed this network of websites - now what is going to be done to prevent them using it as intended (casual users on phones promoting soundbites to friends are not going to be checking the list in such articles…)?
Having said that, the anglosphere experienced this already in 2016 with Brexit and Trump, and such networks also promoted anti-french coups in Africa, so to ‘uncover’ this now seems rather behind the wave. A specific issue among francophone elite was their concept that to make french great again they had to focus on resisting “anglo-saxons”, so were naïvely tempted by russian narratives about a “multi-polar world”. Russia wants to divide europeans, we need to cooperate better.

Hmm, surprised it’s that much lower - wonder why? Maybe 1% in .be hide wealth in .lu , and fgov is not good at tracing it. Also chateaux in the south of belgium seem relatively cheap (wrt elsewhere).

Does ‘foreign funding’ include from within EU? If so, doesn’t that break the concept of the Single European Market for services (as well as democracy and human rights etc.)?

Indeed, and it’s good you clarify this. Handy to have a crazier fringe party to publicly open such topics.

Orban also made it obvious, walking about with a t-shirt showing a map of ‘make hungary great again’. On that map, Zakarpatia is small compared to Transylvania, and the whole of Slovakia, however EU membership kills such dreams, so… Beautiful green mountains by the way, very peaceful area.

spraying silver fog from planes to seed clouds comes to mind… (checkout geo-engineering)

Others summarised below, I just add that in chinese it’s 一带一路, terms broader than “belt” or “road” - 路 translates better as way as it can also cover sea-ways, railways etc. , 带 can also mean carry or zone, etc… So, it implies cooperation on infrastructure projects, but was not a great choice of name for global translation.
I support developing overland transport rather than flying, for climate reasons, however it’s obviously also about geopolitical deals - otherwise why would Italy be on the way from China to anywhere?

Sure need to consider that - but what bad policy could they get through QMV (>> simple majority but << consensus), that a lone more progressive m-state might otherwise block ?

Within EU there are proposals to move to QMV for most topics (spanish presidency still pushing this), problem is vetos block such reform. EU doesn’t have any power to invade (yet?). Regarding UN, most processes, like UNFCCC and even IPCC, operate by consensus - this dilutes many outcomes, it’s a pity. As for UN-SC, its record of helping is not great, just legitimizes old power, maybe should be abolished. I’d rather see a weighted GA vote (maybe excluding parties to a conflict).

EU needs to abandon unanimity in decision making - it’s not even the veto of one “country”, but of one party in one country. Same for UN. Pure consensus is not working.

Public services are important but only part of the story. Another part is the cost of housing - related to investment, economic policies, and demographics. Regarding the latter, european populations are not changing much (increase a little in west, decline a little in east), however households get smaller - especially there are more old people retaining large houses, which reduces space for the young. Unfortunately it’s much easier to blame this on migration, regardless of reality, that won’t fix anything but does help the far-right who first pushed that agenda.

Good. But priority for EU is integrate the West Balkans (waiting too long), Ukraine + Moldova.
In parallel reform processes:

• abolish national vetos (aka consensus) so no Orban-types can take the ship hostage.
• strengthen the EU parliament, over the council and commission
• accept concept of multi-tier participation (it’s reality anyway)

We need more debating each issue on each merits, rather than horse-trade mega-packages of transactional deals. In that respect, if Britain rejoins one component at a time, it’s better for everybody’s understanding of benefits and challenges.

The site wybory.gov.pl shows maps, if you click on a party name, which illustrate a clear NW / SE divide, as well as the urban / rural divide that’s common everywhere. Any explanations, why NW is so different from SE, and how to reduce such polarisation?

Thanks for this link - plots fit my expectations, very useful to quantify such correlation factors. However the examples are only for ‘developed’ countries - would be interesting to see similar for rest of the world. How are the trends in African cities, for example ? Maybe indoor living space (for kids to play) is more important in cold climates (or when there are too many cars on streets! ) ?

How can russian teachers coordinate quietly, to discuss responses to this? And the older students too? Could the fediverse play a role, as it’s hard for the state to shut it down? I’m recalling how, in the 1980s, samizdat (self-printing of books) and later magnetizdat (self-copying of music), as well as anekdoti (complex jokes…), helped to crumble the general trust in the state propaganda (especially after chernobyl).

The inconsistent solidarity during wartime sends a strange message. Beyond that, european politicians claim to be concerned about inflation and cost of living, yet they block a cheap source of grain, as well as spending millions to destroy french wine, and subsidise exporting chicken to africa - it doesn’t make sense to me. Is this really an efficient way to buy a few votes ? I suppose it may be partly brinkmanship regarding who should pay to develop infrastructure to facilitate transit - for example extending the Ukrainian-gauge railway beyond Katowice, make another to the port of Gdansk, and later make standard gauge railways into central Ukraine. It could be done, build rather than ban.