Divisions within Germany’s Social Democrats over rearmament and relations with Russia are set to come to a head at a congress starting Friday, as party leader and finance minister Lars Klingbeil faces a backlash from the party’s old guard.

One critic is the eldest son of former SPD chancellor Willy Brandt, whose Ostpolitik of rapprochement with the Soviet Union at the height of the cold war still looms large over the party.

Peter Brandt, who says he never saw completely eye to eye with his father, said he signed the manifesto because he thinks the Russian threat is overblown.

“I do not share the idea that Russia is going to attack Nato,” he said. “The Russian army has shown weaknesses in the Ukraine war.”

He added that Nato “is now conventionally superior to the Russian army. Even without the Americans”. He also described Nato’s newly adopted goal of spending 5 per cent of GDP on defence as “irrational”.

“The rational approach should be: you do a threat analysis first.”

Oslo police on Friday announced charges against Marius Borg Høiby, the eldest son of Norway’s crown princess, on counts including rape, sexual assault and bodily harm after a months-long investigation of a case that involved a “double-digit” number of alleged victims.

Guy watched Game of Thrones and based his whole personality off it.

I didn’t know about this community until recently, this thread shows me it’s good I do now. :)

They weren’t purposefully breaking stuff meant for Ukraine though, they were purposefully breaking stuff owned by a Israeli defense company that happened to be meant for Ukraine.

at what point is a bus so small it becomes a mini-van?

I imagine the extent of media coverage might also greatly influence how a perpetrator is treated. But probably also true skin colour / cultural background greatly influences the amount of media coverage. To be honest, I think we as humans are all at least a bit racist and xenophobic (or just phobic in general for sure), but we really can’t allow the way our brains are wired to decide how well or badly we treat other human beings.

Ikr, it’s unbelievable. I wish at least there was like this one story of a leaked spy thing we did to Russia, but there seems to be nothing except support Ukraine (at least there is that).

Italy, Spain and three other southern EU countries have criticised a proposed Franco-British migration deal, arguing it could leave them having to take back people returned from the UK to the continent.

The five nations, which also include Greece, Malta and Cyprus, have sent a letter to the European Commission, seen by the Financial Times, objecting to France negotiating an arrangement to swap asylum seekers with Britain in a bid to deter migrants from crossing the Channel in boats.

Maybe only because there are no genie laws to begin with 😵.

Yesterday someone posted a link to an article in The Sun, it’s headline was Britain’s migrant crisis being fuelled by Putin’s Russia and other hostile states in secret plot to destabilise UK; I feel I might just as well copy and paste my comment to that post:

The amount of shit Russia pulls without getting any kind repercussion truly astonishes me.

Thanks for giving an extensive answer, wish I could give you more than one upvote in return. I feel there is so much misinformation it gets harder to trust media. But also activist aren’t always trustworthy, this seeming to prove that once more.

I’m pasting the description of that post here, because it might mean someone reads this who otherwise wouldn’t have:

Israeli soldiers in Gaza told Haaretz that the army has deliberately fired at Palestinians near aid distribution sites over the past month. Conversations with officers and soldiers reveal that commanders ordered troops to shoot at crowds to drive them away or disperse them, even though it was clear they posed no threat.

“It’s a killing field,” one soldier said. “Where I was stationed, between one and five people were killed every day. They’re treated like a hostile force – no crowd-control measures, no tear gas – just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars. Then, once the center opens, the shooting stops, and they know they can approach. Our form of communication is gunfire.”

The soldier added, “We open fire early in the morning if someone tries to get in line from a few hundred meters away, and sometimes we just charge at them from close range. But there’s no danger to the forces.” According to him, “I’m not aware of a single instance of return fire. There’s no enemy, no weapons.” He also said the activity in his area of service is referred to as Operation Salted Fish – the name of the Israeli version of the children’s game “Red light, green light”.

I heard about a plan for a law on having designated places for vehicles charging (since they’re much less likely to catch fire when they’re turned off), with things like not below ground where fire dept. can’t reach them, not near staircases, not close to electrical facilities etc. Seems like common sense, but until we have such regulations this will happen again.

Reform UK and AfD are also openly boosted by the US government.

Most people are inclined to shoo flies away from food, and the thought of maggots in your bins is enough to make anyone’s stomach turn.

But a handful of city councils have embraced maggots - more formally known as fly larvae - and their taste for rotting food.

In Vilnius, capital of the Baltic state of Lithuania, fly larvae have officially been given the job of processing the 2,700 tonnes of food waste the city’s 607,000 residents put out for collection each year, alongside that of the six neighbouring councils.

[…]

The current alternative for sending food waste to landfill is anaerobic digestion (AD), a breakdown process which creates biogas.

However, Mr Kotch says current AD plants aren’t enough to cope with the anticipated influx of household food waste.

“Globally, over 1.3 billion tonnes of food is wasted every year. We believe up to 40% of that could be upcycled using insect waste management. And not only does it avoid disposal costs and methane emissions, but it also produces valuable protein and organic fertiliser,” says Mr Kotch.

Inheritance tax decreases the power of families and increases of individuals, which results in a more equal society.

And while were working to remain outside Russia, train some cyberwarfare experts, launch a bunch of IT programs at universities, set-up funding for innovate tech start-ups. EU can do this. Fuck putin. Russian people need to be liberated beyond occupied Ukraine (ok, maybe that is a more longterm thing but), let’s gooo.

BRUSSELS — A potentially imminent vote of no confidence in European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is almost certain to fail, but would at the same time compound her embarrassment over the Pfizergate scandal.

Romanian right-wing lawmaker Gheorghe Piperea has filed a motion of censure against von der Leyen over her secret texts from 2021 with Albert Bourla, the chief executive of pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, during discussions on getting vaccines to Europe at the height of the coronavirus pandemic.

FRANKFURT, June 27 (Reuters) - The ECB should abandon targeting headline inflation and focus instead on price growth in discretionary spending to protect the bloc’s poorest, a paper to be presented to policymakers at the bank’s preeminent research conference argued on Friday.

The ECB targets inflation at 2% and a soon-to-be-concluded review will not even discuss the definition of the target as policymakers have long argued that using a different measures, like underlying inflation, or figures incorporating housings costs, could sow confusion.

But the paper written for the ECB Forum on Central Banking in Sintra, Portugal next week argues that the current framework disproportionately hurts low income workers and leads to an inferior outcome for society.

I’ve heard Russia look for locals willing to do crime for them through telegram and Snapchat, so it could be both even