It's news you can use from places with different views! (Don't misuse or abuse you yahoos.)
Biden has already released a statement congratulating Lula and explicitly noting the election as free and fair, which seems like a not-so-subtle signal to Bolsonaro that the US isn’t going to support a right-wing coup for the first time ever.
(well, not openly at least)
Better bring in the CIA chiefs to make sure they get the memo.
CIA Chiefs: I knew we forgot something this month!
So why is he still not in jail? Rhetorical question really…
That was from this Time Magazine article from May 2022 that was based on an interview that happened in late March 2022, about a month into the war.
Lula said a lot about the war in Ukraine in that interview beyond the above quote:
I want to speak about the war in Ukraine. You have always prided yourself on being able to speak to everyone—Hugo Chavez as much as George Bush. But the world today is very fragmented diplomatically. I want to know if your approach still works. Could you speak to Vladimir Putin after what he’s done in Ukraine?
We politicians reap what we sow. If I sow fraternity, solidarity, harmony, I’ll reap good things. If I sow discord, I’ll reap quarrels. Putin shouldn’t have invaded Ukraine. But it’s not just Putin who is guilty. The U.S. and the E.U. are also guilty. What was the reason for the Ukraine invasion? NATO? Then the U.S. and Europe should have said: “Ukraine won’t join NATO.” That would have solved the problem.
Do you think the threat of Ukraine joining NATO was Russia’s real reason for invading?
That’s the argument they put forward. If they have a secret one, we don’t know. The other issue was Ukraine joining the E.U. The Europeans could have said: “No, now is not the moment for Ukraine to join the E.U., we’ll wait.” They didn’t have to encourage the confrontation.
But I think they did try to speak to Russia.
No, they didn’t. The conversations were very few. If you want peace, you have to have patience. They could have sat at a negotiating table for 10, 15, 20 days, a whole month, trying to find a solution. I think dialogue only works when it is taken seriously.
If you were President right now, what would you do? Would you have been able to avoid the conflict?
I don’t know if I’d be able to. If I was President, I would have phoned [Joe] Biden, and Putin, and Germany, and [Emmanuel] Macron. Because war is not the solution. I think the problem is that if you don’t try, you don’t fix things. And you have to try.
I sometimes get worried. I was very concerned when the U.S. and the E.U. adopted [Juan] Guaidó [then leader of Venezuela’s parliament] as President of the country [in 2019]. You don’t play with democracy. For Guaidó to be President, he would have to be elected. Bureaucracy can’t substitute politics. In politics, it’s two heads of state who are governing, both elected by their people, who have to sit down at the negotiating table and look each other in the eye and talk.
And now, sometimes I sit and watch the President of Ukraine speaking on television, being applauded, getting a standing ovation by all the [European] parliamentarians. This guy is as responsible as Putin for the war. Because in the war, there’s not just one person guilty. Saddam Hussein was as guilty as Bush [for the outbreak of the 2003 Iraq war]. Because Saddam Hussein could have said, “You can come here and check and I will prove that I do not have mass destruction weapons.” But he lied to his people. And now, this President of Ukraine could have said, “Come on, let’s stop talking about this NATO business, about joining the E.U. for a while. Let’s discuss a bit more first.”
So Volodomyr Zelensky should have talked to Putin more, even with 100,000 Russian troops at his border?
I don’t know the President of Ukraine. But his behavior is a bit weird. It seems like he’s part of the spectacle. He is on television morning, noon, and night. He is in the U.K. parliament, the German parliament, the French parliament, the Italian parliament, as if he were waging a political campaign. He should be at the negotiating table.
The real question is what does Lula think now, nine months into the war, with the lie that the invasion was just about NATO or EU expansion exposed for Putin's desire to revive Russia's long-dead empire.
Either way Brazil is very likely to continue its path of studiously avoiding any overt alignment with any major international power as witnessed by their abstention from the recent UN Security Council vote condemning Russia's fake annexation of Ukrainian territory while acknowledging that the vote was illegitimate and didn't genuinely reflect the will of local population.
BRIC seems to be taking on a new meaning.
It's a pity Lula was the only alternative to Bolsonaro.
There is no other way to describe it.
Doug Ford and the Ontario government got into a game of chicken with public sector unions. Let's be clear in this about the difference in power between the two sides.
The government got into a staring contest with CUPE.
The Ford government blinked.
The government holds literally all the cards. The only option for the unions was to illegally go on strike (because that's what the strike on friday and monday were) and risk fines of $4000 per day for the members (more than 10% of their annual salary) and $500,000 per day for CUPE.
The Ford government blinked.
The members of CUPE, supported by pretty much every other union across Canada, said "bring it."
And the Ford government blinked.
Sure, you will see messaging by the Ford government that CUPE gave in for the students, but it is just spin.
The Ford government blinked.
The next time someone says that unions are not effective and aren't needed anymore. Just remember. The Ford government held all the cards.
And the Ford government blinked.
I think the jury is still out. The Ford government hasn't done anything but say they are going to do something. We already know truth isn't the Ford family's strong point. Even if they do roll things back as they said, all they've done is go back to where this started. CUPE employees are still waiting for a reasonable deal that the Ontario government has shown it won't negotiate.
I think CUPE gave Ford a free pass. They should have said negotiate today or we continue the protests and organize the other large unions behind us for support. Instead they're back to square one, which is really square -20.
CUPE is looking at this much longer term.
They were on strike for 2 days, and didn't get fined the $1 million they could have been fined. Their members who walked didn't get the $8000 in fines the could have gotten.
This was a test run to see if he could get away with it prior to truly engaging with the teacher's unions.
Immigrant-welcoming countries improve. Xenophobic countries decline.
Immigrant-welcoming countries improve. Xenophobic countries decline.
A million times this.
That sounds like a gross over-simplification.
Aren't most 1st world countries dealing with this issue?
Girls are forced to do unspeakable things in Iran. Strong content.
That sounds like a gross over-simplification.
Aren't most 1st world countries dealing with this issue?
No. Most have the problem but almost none are dealing with it. Immigration is part of the story but definitely not all of it. Even countries with traditionally strong traditions of immigration have populations with low birth rates.
Given a free choice women generally want more children than the replacement rate (link to survey results)
Many western countries are hostile to children in their policies. Even after we talk about maternity leave, very few have adequate provision for childcare outside of school. So very often people have to wait until later in their careers to have children.
Then there is the fact that most areas of the 1st world countries have a housing crisis where there are jobs and a jobs crisis where there is housing. So the choice of children leads to a material reduction in standard of living (despite the intangible benefits of having children).
When I wrote "dealing with this issue", I meant they have this issue (I blame on it English not being my native language ) but, yeah, what you wrote is generally the impression I have of the root causes.
When I wrote "dealing with this issue", I meant they have this issue (I blame on it English not being my native language ) but, yeah, what you wrote is generally the impression I have of the root causes.
Ah miscommunication on my part, . Apologies, I think I am being a bit oversensitive to any linking of birth rates and immigration. Generally it’s being used as a wedge issue by the far right to roll back any feminism, since if women have no choice but to be mothers, then I guess this will solve the uppity women problem. The framing is wrong, people don’t need to be forced to procreate, we just need society to suck less.
China Covid: Protests widen against strict lockdown measures
Protests in China against government's strict Covid measures have intensified, with some people publicly venting their anger at the Communist Party leaders.
Thousands of protesters took to the streets of Shanghai, where the BBC saw people being bundled into police cars.
Students have also demonstrated at universities in Beijing and Nanjing.
The latest unrest follows a protest in the remote north-west city of Urumqi, where lockdown rules were blamed after 10 people died in a tower block fire.
While Chinese authorities deny that Covid restrictions caused the deaths, officials in Urumqi did issue an unusual apology late on Friday, and pledged to "restore order" by phasing out restrictions.
That's in Xinjiang, too.
Did you know? The Chinese invented powderkegs.
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