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Cake day: July 22nd, 2024

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  • In the right circumstances it is a powerful tool. The question is, whether these circumstances apply in the current US

    Is what i said.

    So to reduce costs of goods we will make cheap items from China cost more so USA made can compete at a higher price. why doesn’t the math work here? how does this result in a better economy?

    Because then manufacturers in the US employ people in the US, who then have more money to consume in the US. That requires the government to also work towards good wages though. Also it allows for industries to grow so they can use economics of scale to drive down their production prices and then their consumer prices.

    Again, for developing industries it can be crucial and is tried and tested. The question is whether that is what the US needs right now.




  • Tariffs affect both sides, but the side with the protectionism can build up a local industry thanks to the tariffs. (Assuming access to the relevant resources)

    That is why all industrialized nations used high tariffs to protect their emerging industries and once they were established demanded low tariffs from other countries to keep their industries small and the markets dependent.

    While in the short run this means a price increase for the consumer, in the long run the local employment and production increase the wealth to offset the initial price increase. That is why “free trade agreements” by industrialized nations often hav devastating effects on the developing nations they push them on. Western “free trade” has ravaged farmers and small business producers in Africa, Asia, South America…

    Finally the government can spend the money it raised through the tariffs to stimulate further growth with spending, or by lowering taxes in other fields.

    Trump understands very well what he does there, and it is not like the economic theory behind it is complicated. The question is, whether this strategy makes sense for the US when there is retaliatory measures taken by the affected countries seeking to export to the US.

    It is the same principle like carbon taxes btw. if you oppose tariffs solely based on the notion that they are “paid by the importer and not the exporter”, you would need to reject carbon taxes, as they are “paid by the consumer, not the company.”



  • I’m pretty sure most countries exclude what was owned by the respective parties before the marriage from the shared ownership and things like inheritances can be exempt even during the marriage.

    Also people can agree on different models of ownership.

    I agree though, that the idea behind the default 50/50, which is to protect mostly women, who make less money as they focus on the household and kids instead of making a career does not work as as a singular concept. Either you have a traditional role separation in the marriage and the legal protections for that apply, or you have a different model that requires different rules.



  • Keep in mind, that the past decade centrist and right wing media did everything to give the AfD maximum attention and for the past 3 years every party from left of center to right bent over backwards to push themselves to the right and far right. the Greens and Social Democrats passed a law to make deportations easier just a week after investigative journalists uncovered a meeting by the AfD, other Fascists and the CDU to discuss plans for large scale deportations. sitting chancellor Scholz had declared “We need to deport in grand style” a few months earlier.

    Now for the AfD ban innitiation a relevant faction of the Green party want to block it on the basis of “wanting more time, a parliamentary inquiry and not to risk giving the AfD a carte blanche if the ban case fails.” I think it is more because they are worried that some of their right and far right policies could come under scrutiny too.

    The reality is that large parts of German politics have been infiltrated by and wanted to move to the right very hard. They just waited for a pretext to do so, where they don’t end up being the far right all of a sudden.

    I’m just mentioning the Green party as an example, because they used to be a progressive party, left of the social democrats and right of the Left party, and i am dissapointed the most in them. But the CDU is using the same election slogans as the AfD currently and the Bavarian abomination CSU now has posters that look the same to posters of the NPD, which is the skinheads with baseball bats style Nazi-party.


    https://mastodon.social/@peterjelinek/113770253157050313

    https://feddit.org/post/6986463/4242805



  • This has been part of a legal discussion over the past twentyish years, as the Internet allows for people to do hate speech that is prosecutable under German law from outside Germany, but targeted towards a German audience.

    The English Wikipedia entry does not include the section about this issue, however the German one does. Maybe you could pass it through a translator of your choice. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksverhetzung#Anwendung_auf_Auslandstaten_(Strafanwendungsrecht)

    Basically the Bundesgerichtshof (federal court) which is the highest instance below the constitutional court used to rule it as sufficient, when the hate speech can be available in Germany. In 2016 they changed this opinion, saying that the possible availability in Germany does not constitute a success of the act and hence it cannot be considered part of the suitability of hate speech committed in another country. Because of that surrounding laws were amended in 2020 to specify that hate speech committed abroad can be prosecuted in Germany, if it was received by a wider audience (i think this is evident in the case of Musks Hitler salute) and the perpetrator is either a German citizen or has significant connections to Germany.

    In regards to jurisdiction you cannot apply the concepts that work inside a federal nation state to how things work between nation states.

    Poland could pass a law to prosecute abortions done abroad under their own jurisdiction, if such a law would be in accordance with other EU laws. If we take the UK instead as an example, they could absolutely do that. Now whether other countries would extradite someone accused under such a law to the UK is another question.




  • As it stands in terms of manifested actual political effects, not virtue signaling and token efforts, Trump managed to push for the ceasefire Biden was unwilling to apply pressure for.

    We will see, how the politics of Trump look, when it comes to material on the ground effects, but Biden proudly stood by and gave more bombs while watching daily how women and children are murdered with them and millions of people have their everything destroyed.

    So so far Trump did much more for Palestinian lifes than Biden. That is not a big achievement of Trump. It just shows that Biden indeed is genocide Joe, who chose every day to continue this, despite all it taking to end it being a phone call.

    Also as Biden delivered weapons while Israel was murdering US aid workers he directly violated US laws.


  • Harris was put in place by the Democratic party and advertised herself to be precisely the continuation of Biden. Aside from some token gestures she did nothing different in regards to Palestine.

    And she made a point of denying Democrats who wanted an end of the genocide to speak at the DNC convention, even though they wanted to advocate people to vote for her, despite the previous actions of the administration she was Vice President in.

    She really hammered home the point that she will continue Bidens murderous Zionism legacy with that one.



  • Reagan threatened Israel with cutting off all aid, unless they play ball. And they did.

    Without the US supporting Israel its other allies would also abandon it quickly.

    So all the US has to do to make Israel do what the US says is withhold support until Israel obeys.

    What Biden did instead was throwing the US to the feet of Israel, at best rambling and making token gestures. So the US halted 2.000 pound bombs? That surely didnt stop Israel from annihilating people in Gaza with the other bombs the US kept delivering.


  • pretty much anyone outside the mainland US.

    But also i find stopping a genocide does matter more than ending much smaller discriminations. Ending those smaller ones is important too, but if someone deems ending their smaller discrimination as more important than stopping a genocide, it seems to come from a place of egoism and supremacism, rather than an ethical conviction for the value of human life and mutual respect.


  • As it stands Israel had to accept a ceasefire process for Gaza, which is pracitcally identical to what was proposed almost a year ago, but Biden didnt apply any pressure. It increased the rifts inside Israels society and parts of the current government coalition left.

    That is a huge defeat for the Israeli government and they wouldnt have accepted it, if there wasnt tangible pressure behing it, e.g. the US cutting off the Arms and Money. Also Biden made a point of quickly passing another few billions to Israel iirc. in November or December, so he also must have feared them to run dry under Trump.

    Most political analysts say that Trump believes in zero sum deals. Israel is a strategic, financial and diplomatic liability to the US. If it is about having a military base in the region Trump could easily strike a deal with another country around.

    Also looking at what typical MAGA heads like Tucker Carlson say, the sentiment towards Israel among the Republicans has changed. More people ask the question, why they should pay up for Israels bullshit. When “The backing of the most powerful military” in practice becomes Videos of American kids being killed, so Israelis can enjoy watching from the beach-side café how the US is expanding their empire, the mood will turn sour quickly.


  • Difference for Palestinians, or for that matter pretty much anyone outside the mainland US.

    Cuba, Chile, Iran, Iraq, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Afghanistan, Yemen and many more suffered from the combined murderous and greedy empire politics of both the Democratic and Republican party.

    Millions of people have been brutally murdered and starved by both parties just throughout the recent history of the US since WW2. The US oligarchy might prefer the Democrats or the Republicans for some time, but the oligarchy continued its murderous and destructive machinations.


  • We thought Assad was to stay in Syria and most countries were looking to reestablish/normalize ties. A month later he was gone.

    It always feels impossible until the regime falls. But all power structures are fundamentally based on no relevant number of people challenging them. And the US always needs to feel it is worth to support Israel. Once that changes and the US drops Israel, it will fall apart in weeks, if it didn’t fall apart until then from its internal rot.