[-] Xenon@lemmy.world 30 points 5 months ago

"Konservativ heißt nicht nach hinten blicken, konservativ heißt an der Spitze des Fortschritts marschieren."

Muss man der Union jetzt wirklich schon Franz Josef Strauß Zitate entgegenhalten?

[-] Xenon@lemmy.world 40 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

How come copyright owners are not legally required to distribute their work?

Copyright is supposedly a deal society strikes with creatives: They create art for society and in return the law ensures that they profit off of their original works. If they no longer uphold their end of the bargain how come the rest of us should still uphold their copyright? If they no longer make their works available their copyright should be forfeit automatically.

[-] Xenon@lemmy.world 27 points 6 months ago

Either that, or, you know, they could have witty, thoughtfully handcrafted ingame ads adding to the atmosphere, parodying the real world.

[-] Xenon@lemmy.world 131 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Elon:

Guys, I think I've got it... What if we built another lane but, you know, under the ground, like a tunnel.

[-] Xenon@lemmy.world 32 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

It must have come as a real shock to the Israelis to learn that someone in the state department knows what international law is.

[-] Xenon@lemmy.world 22 points 6 months ago

Der World Happiness Report 2024 hat aufgezeigt, dass in Deutschland (und in einigen weiteren westlichen Staaten) die Unter-30-jährigen inzwischen die unglücklichste Alterskohorte sind, entgegen dem globalen Trend. Bis 2013 waren die Jungen noch am glücklichsten, doch seitdem sind die Werte in den Befragungen signifikant gefallen. Alle anderen Alterskohorten dagegen wurden im gleichen Zeitraum glücklicher.

Das mag teilweise mit der Pandemie zusammenhängen, aber der Trend zeichnet sich hierzulande schon länger ab und er dauert an. Solche Umfragen sind natürlich schwer zu interpretieren, aber angesichts dieser Ergebnisse kann man schon sagen, dass etwas grundlegend schief läuft, im Umgang der Gesellschaft mit jungen Menschen. Das ist nicht nur ein diffuses Bauchgefühl, dass die Lebensqualität für Junge abnimmt, während die Zukunftsängste steigen.

[-] Xenon@lemmy.world 80 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Can someone explain to me why Americans seem so hostile towards Biden over Gaza all of a sudden?

US support for Israel goes back decades. America has been in bed with all sorts of dictators commiting heinous crimes and still is. Not to forget the illegal invasion of Iraq with hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties or the long list of US war crimes revealed by WikiLeaks and largely indiscriminate drone strikes across the globe. Most of these seemed to elicit much harsher condemnation overseas while the US public appeared generally uninterested. So why does this conflict in Palestine in which the US isn't even an active party suddenly evoke such an emotional response?

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[-] Xenon@lemmy.world 17 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

For now reddit seems fine (even though I feel a noticable deterioration of multiple communities). Though the important change is that alternatives have established themselves. Lemmy might not be big right now but from now on reddit has to be extra careful not to upset redditors. Every new step they take that worsens the experience will drive a new wave of users away from their site and now more of them will find communities elsewhere that have been established during the first exodus this year.

At the same time I'm unfortunately quite certain that the enshittification of reddit will continue as investors demand higher profits. So we will see more waves of redditors leaving. Such a migration in waves could also be observed with Twitter, after every new step that Elon took to ruin the site.

[-] Xenon@lemmy.world 33 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

That's exactly the point many people don't seem to get. Yes, zoning more land for construction or lowering building cost might help but the key issue is that housing has become a major asset for the rich and especially institutional investors globally. There's just so much money out there in search of investment opportunities but unlike stocks or Bitcoin housing is a core human need. Coupled with increasing wealth inequality and stagnant wages this is a major problem. When crypto or Nasdaq celebrate new records that's nice for investors but when the property market goes up and up many people can no longer afford rent.

Privat property investors are part of the problem whether they like it or not. Given these circumstances I find it hard to imagine a solution that doesn't include massive state intervention in the housing market.

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[-] Xenon@lemmy.world 51 points 1 year ago

Und wenn wir das jetzt alle gemeinsam noch lauter sagen, dann funktioniert es dieses Mal auch ganz bestimmt.

Als ob das nicht schon seit Jahren ein Mantra aller Innenminister gewesen wäre. Die einzige Folge solcher stumpfen Abschiebeparolen wird sein, dass wir in Zukunft noch mehr Berichte über Abschiebungen von seit dreißig Jahren in Deutschland lebenden Familien sehen werden, weil der Vater 1993 irgendein Formular falsch ausgefüllt hat. Das sind schließlich die Einzigen, die praktisch schnell abgeschoben werden können und immerhin sieht die Statistik am Jahresende dann besser aus. Und die AfD profitiert natürlich wahnsinnig von diesem Gerede.

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The west African leaders who gathered for an emergency summit last weekend amid the unfolding coup in Niger weighed their options over how to respond.

Condemn the plotters, impose sanctions, recall ambassadors and suspend the country from their Economic Community of West African States? All were on the table. Yet the Ecowas communiqué went much further.

If the demand that the coup leaders cede power was “not met within one week we will take all measures necessary to restore constitutional order”, it warned on Sunday. “Such measures may include the use of force.”

A community mostly concerned with free movement of goods and people does not usually issue such military threats. But having faced criticism for its failure to take a strong line with previous west African putsches, Ecowas — now led by heavyweight Nigeria — was eyeing a different approach, analysts claimed.

“After tough tactics confronting the Mali junta didn’t work, Ecowas played it softly with Burkina Faso and Guinea after the coups there and that was no more effective and those juntas were able to become entrenched,” said Paul Melly, a Sahel expert at the Chatham House think-tank.

“Ecowas is now reverting to the principle of a really tough approach with a difference that Nigeria’s new president is a much more vocally proactive figure on this issue,” he said, referring to Bola Tinubu, who became Ecowas chair in July a few weeks after becoming Nigeria’s president.

Afolabi Adekaiyaoja, analyst at the Centre for Democracy and Development think-tank, said the coup was a “make or break moment for Ecowas and its ability to restrict unconstitutional transfers of power. Tinubu needs to be seen as the man who brought back democracy in Niger. It would augur well if Nigeria is seen as the strong authority in the region.”

Ecowas defence chiefs began a two-day meeting in the Nigerian capital Abuja on Wednesday as a delegation from the regional bloc travelled to Niamey as part of efforts to mediate a solution to the crisis. Nigeria also moved to ramp up pressure on the Niger junta by cutting off electricity to a country where it supplies more than 70 per cent of the power.

A senior member of Tinubu’s party said the new president had the chance to revive the muscular foreign policy he said had been lacking since former president Olusegun Obasanjo left office in 2007.

Obasanjo, who recently brokered a deal to end the Ethiopian civil war, helped shore up democracy in the region and personally escorted the deposed president of São Tomé and Principe back to his country after he was ousted in a coup by mutinous soldiers in 2003.

“He made Nigeria relevant on the continent and in the world — and we need to return to that,” the Tinubu ally said.

The coup in Niger last week toppled the democratically elected and pro-western president Mohamed Bazoum and installed a military junta led by Omar Tchiani, who previously ran the presidential guard. Bazoum, who allowed US and French forces to use Niger as bases from which to conduct anti-terror operations across the region, is under house arrest.

France’s embassy in the capital Niamey was attacked in the days after the coup by pro-junta demonstrators, some chanting pro-Russia slogans. Paris on Tuesday began evacuating citizens and those from other EU countries as the junta stepped up efforts to secure its grip by arresting politicians affiliated with the deposed government.

There are divisions in west Africa over how to handle Niger despite the strong Ecowas declaration. Burkina Faso and Mali, suspended members whose leaders came to power via coups, said they would consider military action in Niger a “declaration of war” while the junta in Guinea called the sanctions on Niger “illegitimate and inhumane”.

Yet Nigeria wields outsized influence in the west African community of nations. It accounts for 63 per cent of the bloc’s economic output, according to the Ecowas Bank for Investment and Development, more than the other 14 nations combined.

It also has the largest army in the region, with 223,000 soldiers and US, Chinese and German-made fighter jets. A Niger intervention would heavily rely on Abuja’s involvement.

Western powers and other African countries such as Algeria have condemned the Niger coup, but none have said if they supported military intervention.

One analyst who recently visited Niger said former colonial power France would not oppose an Ecowas intervention while being extremely wary of direct action. “France won’t want to be even suspected of being involved,” said the analyst. Paris on Sunday welcomed the Ecowas declaration and called for the “return to the constitutional order in Niger” under Bazoum.

Diplomacy remains Ecowas’s first choice to mediate, according to officials who point to a visit to Niamey this week by Chad president Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno, where he met the putschists and held talks with Bazoum.

But Déby makes for an awkward interlocutor since he is essentially a coup leader who took over power when his father died. The African Union and western powers continue to embrace the Chadian leader despite a stalling of the promised transition to democracy.

But with the clock ticking on the deadline, Ecowas might have backed itself into a corner by putting a short timeline before threatening to exercise military options.

Yet a military threat has worked in the past, notably by convincing long-serving Gambian dictator Yahya Jammeh to go into exile in 2017 after he initially refused to cede power following an election loss.

Others point out that Niger is different. Ulf Laessing, director of the Sahel programme at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, questioned the support for the deposed regime in the military, noting how “no army unit has come to the rescue of Bazoum”.

Another analyst working in Niger said of any possible intervention: “If there’s anything that would destroy popular support for Bazoum it would be that.”

The junta leaders, meanwhile, are talking tough, with spokesman Colonel Amadou Abdramane alleging this week that France was plotting an attack to rescue Bazoum. “We want to once more remind Ecowas — or any other adventurer — of our firm determination to defend our homeland,” he said.

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By S'thembile Cele July 19, 2023 at 6:57 AM EDT

Russian President Vladimir Putin won’t attend next month’s summit of BRICS leaders and will instead be represented by his foreign minister, South Africa’s presidency said. The rand pared its earlier losses. Putin’s decision means the South African authorities will avoid having to execute an International Criminal Court warrant for the Russian leader’s arrest.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will attend the summit in Putin’s stead, the presidency said in a statement on Wednesday. The decision for Putin not to attend was by mutual consent, it said.

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Xenon

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