The Gaming Den

The EU also suffers from the fact that:
- national politicians keep blaming it for everything
- as a EU citizen unless you actively research it, you have no idea how it works
- as a EU citizen, you don't get informed about the participation opportunities, even though there are quite a few
- even when you get to participate, your voice is drowned by the voice of the lobbies of the private sector (that has both the knowledge of all these opportunities and the means to use/abuse them) that not only participate in their name but also quite often in the name of some states (because they'll also work at national level to get support from the national governments).

How is that different from any representative governmental form...ever?

You don't have to explain to the citizens of most representatives governments that they can vote in elections at all. Many EU citizens don't even realize there are elections for EU positions that they can participate in. Not elections for a specific position, but in general. If you passed a survey around EU member states asking their citizens if they think the EU would be better, worse, or unchanged if citizens of EU member states could directly elect some EU officials, I'd bet a minority of them would realize they were being asked a very transparent trick question.

This just in, The communists throw their support behind Corbyn. Probably because, labor's shadow chancellor John McDonnel is a life long Stalinist. Who has been quote, "waiting for the banking crisis his whole life."

Pro tip: The Sun is not a news source. Giving a May Day speech in Trafalgar Square is not a tacit or explicit endorsement of any particular protest movement because it is a day for all protest movements to take turns giving speeches. Further, there is no such thing as a Stalin flag, and the flag of Syria is used by all kinds of flavors of Syrian rebels in addition to the Assad regime.

The Sun is always ridiculous right wing propaganda and should always try to figure out where the trick is in any article they present. But in this case the lie is so transparent you don't have to dig any deeper than the headline.

-Username17

Murdoch rags are going the extra mile of shittery there. Are they that terrified of the possibility of a Labour victory?

For that matter, what are the odds of the election, and why did May decide to call for an early one? Is she going "Fuck this, fuck you for making me PM just in time for Germany to tell me to go fuck myself and deal with this Brexit mess" or is this "Well we have some kind of support now and might be able to steal it, thus securing another X years, but if we wait for the full term, people will see how shitty we are both internally and at dealing with others"?

Is she going "Fuck this, fuck you for making me PM just in time for Germany to tell me to go fuck myself and deal with this Brexit mess" or is this "Well we have some kind of support now and might be able to steal it, thus securing another X years, but if we wait for the full term, people will see how shitty we are both internally and at dealing with others"?

Sad to say I'm pretty sure it's the latter, and I don't think she's wrong - Labour in particular is a clown show at the moment. I'm hoping for an upset but I don't think either Labour or the LibDems are in a position to deliver it.

Koumei wrote: For that matter, what are the odds of the election, and why did May decide to call for an early one? Is she going "Fuck this, fuck you for making me PM just in time for Germany to tell me to go fuck myself and deal with this Brexit mess" or is this "Well we have some kind of support now and might be able to steal it, thus securing another X years, but if we wait for the full term, people will see how shitty we are both internally and at dealing with others"?

Theresa May sees a local maximum of victory for the Tories in June followed by a local minimum of victory for the Tories in 2020 if they retain control over Brexit negotiations.

So if there are new elections in 2017 then there aren't mandatory elections until 2022. If the Tories can win now then they dron't have to have elections again until the anger at the failed Brexit has faded from voter memories. If the Tories lose now they can almost certainly get enough seats that they can count on the coalition government falling apart after the Brexit and mount a powerful campaign as outside agitators against the disaster that is obviously ultimately their fault. So they have the first election now, when the initial anger at all the blatant Brexit lies and initial drop of the £ has subsided but the other shoe of actually having a real Brexit deal (which by definition will be a massive fuckup followed by an economic contraction) has not dropped yet. Then they demand an election in 2019 if they are out of power or refuse to hold an election until 2022 if they are in power.



Note obviously that Theresa May refused to hold new elections when the Pound was in free fall after the initial Brexit vote because "Lol, go fuck yourself." And that she said there were going to be no new elections before Brexit less than a week before she demanded new elections. And of course the stated reason for the flipflop was that parliament was supposedly blocking an act that it had already passed. The mendacity is surreal, but of course the media doesn't take her to task for this ridiculously blatant lying like at all.

-Username17

Meanwhile somebody has apparently hacked Macron's party in an attempt to influence the French election. It could be anyone putin their cyberwarfare division to work, I'm not russian to any conclusions here.

Yeah, it's really surprising that the DNC, Merkel, and Macron, have all been hacked by totally transparency no political affiliation wikileaks, but RNC, Le Pen, and whatever fucking right win crazies are in DE all have really good security against hacks.

I mean, is there something about being pro authoritarian that makes you just better at internet security?

I mean, it can't be that Russia is involved, because PL, that guy who ran away to hide when it turned out Trump is actually worse than Democrats (who could have predicted that!) told me for sure that it wasn't because Russia was hacking.

France picks Macron

And Macron's campaign evidently threw out some chaff to confuse and keep WikiLeaks busy--bullshit e-mails and fake passwords so Wikileaks dumped a bunch of faked e-mails, or something.

Vive la France.

Kaelik wrote:Yeah, it's really surprising that the DNC, Merkel, and Macron, have all been hacked by totally transparency no political affiliation wikileaks, but RNC, Le Pen, and whatever fucking right win crazies are in DE all have really good security against hacks.

I mean, is there something about being pro authoritarian that makes you just better at internet security?
.

Actually, yeah. With a high proportion of backwards thinking Luddites, their crazy shit just isn't there to be hacked. It's horribly inefficient and a little crazy, but it is effective, even if only by accident.

That and a lot of creepy ass decisions are still 'gentlemen's agreements' made over drinks in the back rooms of the RNC. Or in other cases, they wear the crazy right out in the open- the fact that their racist, sexist fucknuggets is actually what their supporters want to hear, so their deep dark secrets aren't exactly an issue if they get exposed.

Voss wrote:

Kaelik wrote:Yeah, it's really surprising that the DNC, Merkel, and Macron, have all been hacked by totally transparency no political affiliation wikileaks, but RNC, Le Pen, and whatever fucking right win crazies are in DE all have really good security against hacks.

I mean, is there something about being pro authoritarian that makes you just better at internet security?
.

Actually, yeah. With a high proportion of backwards thinking Luddites, their crazy shit just isn't there to be hacked. It's horribly inefficient and a little crazy, but it is effective, even if only by accident.

That and a lot of creepy ass decisions are still 'gentlemen's agreements' made over drinks in the back rooms of the RNC. Or in other cases, they wear the crazy right out in the open- the fact that their racist, sexist fucknuggets is actually what their supporters want to hear, so their deep dark secrets aren't exactly an issue if they get exposed.

There is no real shit in the DNC, Macron, or Merkel hacks. Literally none.

It's just about putting out so much volume in a sense that implies malice to convince people that there is anything there.

If the RNC USES COMPUTERS (spoiler alert, they do) then there is equally as much meaningful content to be hacked (fucking zero but there is lots of fucking meaningless shit).

Maxus wrote:France picks Macron

And Macron's campaign evidently threw out some chaff to confuse and keep WikiLeaks busy--bullshit e-mails and fake passwords so Wikileaks dumped a bunch of faked e-mails, or something.

Vive la France.

Being American, all I really know about the French election is that La Pen would've been awful, but that's about it. So is Macron winning a good thing?

It's basically "Not the worst-case scenario". It's more of what they've had for ages, but that means either the worst happens 5 years from now instead of "right now", and there's time for things to change. France doesn't have to lead the revolution, it just has to hold out and not turn to fascism.

Also, the macaroon has suggested France will be continuing to abide by climate change goals and Trump can suck it, and has basically offered all climate scientists in the US some refuge. And that much is more than the tepid display I expected.

During his campaign, Macron was more or less pre-election King Smurf. He'd support everyone and have speeches where he'd enthusiastically shout bland campaign stuff. There was even a joke that he'd only reveal his platform once elected.

From what he's actually revealed, and from what is known of him, he's strongly liberal, even more so in some ways than the traditional French right. But at the same time he seems to want more social spending than the traditional French right. You can say he's the end-result of the "social-liberalism" trend that we had for some time where socialists wanted more liberalism to generate more money to inject in social stuff.

It's more or less an unashamed version of what Hollande's government had been trying to do during the last three years. It hasn't been popular, it doesn't seem to work that well but isn't as bad as straight-up facism. Only the global economical situation (and I guess terrorist threats) will decide if we get the worst in five years.

Someone here mentioned this already, but here's an actual news piece about it:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/09/worl ... p=cur&_r=0

http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/world-n ... rg-Germany
just good i am such a shut in couch potatoe . . i had tickets for that . .
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/3711222/g ... or-threat/

Meanwhile in germany:
G20 Summit in Hamburg.
I have Several Police Squadcars and water cannons on the other side of the road from me right now.
All buslines in this part of the city are canceled.
And i have to get through that to go to work.
FML -.-

Update:
Am at work.
Out of work in 10 minutes.
Antifa Black Block about 500-1000m from here.
20 big Police Personal Carriers just went by outside.
Bus lines are all pretty much dead.

I am ever so slightly worried about getting home.
Especially since i dress more or less like those antifa idiots -.-

made it home. only took about 3 times as long <.<

Oh, you mean those protests where black clad tugs good bois who dindu nuffin peacuflly set cars on fire and smashed windows. You should be worried about getting home. And the government should probably declare martial law.