I agree. It’s comparing apples to bananas and tbh both governments suck in their very own ways and I really don’t want to take a side here because I disagree with them both but for very different reasons.

And you can have the opinion that the “joke” - which really isn’t a joke but geopolitical criticism like most “Tankie” memes where the punch line is “look at the stupid West funding these countries” is really bland.

But my point was being that simply dismissing a source simply because it is from Hexbear isn’t a particularly good reason (at least to me) because not engaging with them will only increase their echo chamber and makes arguing worse and worse for the few lemmings that still dare to do. And as someone who still sees both sides, if it wasn’t for geopolitics Liberal Lefties and Tankies would easily agree on almost anything.

But you commented still. And if OP wasn’t being honest about the source you’d have never known.

Jokes aside if it was only about having a safe space for the jewish they would have taken the Jewish Autonomous Oblast but they wanted that specific region for historical reasons and that is why they would have rejected the South German State of Israel the same way they ultimately rejected the Jewish Autonomous Oblast and by shrinking the German State (East and West combined compared to the Weimar Republic) to 1/3 of their previous size you would effectively end up with some hybrid form of the Palestine problem and the Donbass problem.

Personally I would have chosen an island like Sardegna where random invasions from your neighbours are unlikely but I think at the end they’d still have resettled Palestine even if you gave them the whole of Britain.

Imo not having any safety measures for the bridge piers was extremely negligent. There was this picture where you’d see cable masts next to the bridge that were being secured by extra thick concrete islands (you can actually spot one in the headline image). Really makes it look like the safety of some cables was more important than the safety of a bridge / people.

Edit: Ofc the incident was caused by the ship

When you log on with your alt account

Maybe Putin watched Star Wars and decided a clone factory is exactly what he needs

Without context it looks like Musk is rooting for the Belarussian opposition lmao

Workers, hearken, they are going to war

And they yell: “For nation and race!”

This war is the rulers of the world’s

Against the working classes!‎

Hanns Eisler in “Der Heimliche Aufmarsch”

(works for both sides ngl)

It’s just a pity that renfe’s new high speed trains built by Talgo seem to be a shaky and noisy experience as highlighted here:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dhEopBWNbTc

A huge W for public transport. I assume the PRC already owning the land is significantly decreasing bureaucratic cost / time, allowing for such fast advances.

In sharp contrast the US (and some European countries) keep running after tech bro “innovations” like the hyperloop rather than sticking to actually working systems. Most of them will never see a real purpose because they were never realisable in the first place or will be slimmed down to a point where conventional public transport would have been the better option. And tbh, most of them are really just bait to keep those countries in a state of “looking for alternatives” whilst their current infrastructure is rotting away. And with especially the US being a nation centered around individual transport the vision for public transport is imo clearly lacking.

Europe in general isn’t hit by that as much, seeing the benefits of current public transport solutions (at least nowadays… the 90’ and 00’ were different thanks to neoliberalism and making short term profits instead of doing long term investments), but it is hindered by the clusterfuck of nations / different railway standards. The EU is trying to manage some of it (with ETCS / ERTMS) as well as the new coupling standard (DAC) and track gauges slowly but steadily going towards 1435mm but there are still a lot of things to do such as a transition towards a standard current or even more important: unified train registration (atm a train/carriage needs to be registered for each country separately which leads to unnecessary train switches at border crossings). For example Italy requires carriages to have a fire extinguishing system whilst some other EU countries don’t or some mountainous countries require specific braking tests. Having unified safety standards would make things a lot easier.

But at the upside at least some European railway companies do have a vision. For example, the ÖBB (Austrian federal railways) plans to have high speed rail connecting the main cities as well as European alpine corridors like the Brenner, Koralm and Semmering, regional trains for distances covering abt 200km and are reachable in abt 2 to 3 hours and (sub-) urban rail for metropolitan areas. In bigger cities, they want to provide bike sharing at the stations whilst they want to make car sharing available in rural areas to help cover the last few kilometres through the mountains/woods/fields, where busses only go on a daily basis if you are lucky and the bus driver doesn’t skip your stop and take a shortcut because they believe nobody will be waiting there anyways and they might reach said vision in the next upcoming years and likely less than a decade.

So TL;DR the PRC is profiting off of their property law, their ability to centralize standards and them going the (at the moment) optimum way instead of hoping for innovation from tech bros with fancy power point presentations and zero knowledge of physics, Europe is doing alright but is a bit of a decentralised mess and the US is getting a bit distracted by “innovations” and their mantra of individual transport.

(My experience in the area mainly comes from working at a state-owned railway company and being interested in the matter in general. If there is anything to add or if I have gotten something wrong, feel free to comment.) ^-^

Russia is still going strong 2 years into the war

You mean the special military operation that was intended to last 3 days to a week at one point?

As an AI language model, I fully agree with your last point.

Same energy

My main reasons for why Austria has gone down this route are that:

1. Austrians are generally very chill apart from Vienna. They have that “Is ma wuaschd!” (I don’t care!) mentality and are lazier than most to stand up against injustice.

2. Some right wing Austrians have mastered the ability to mask their political views. They would say something mainstream when publicly being asked about their political views but nothing straight up outrageous as they want to keep a positive image in the mainstream. They don’t want to let everyone know their views but rot the apple from the core. You only get to know their true colors at the bar table (after some drinks even) or behind closed doors. I had personal experiences where folks was acting nice towards foreigners / LGBTQ+ but as soon as they left they’d go on a rant or make fun of them. And you just awkwardly look around and search for people who are doing the same and depending on how many other folks you see you’d interfere or find an excuse to leave early, mumble “oaschlecha” (assholes) and never come back (unless you really have to).

3. Austria wasn’t punished or humiliated nearly as hard in WW2 as Germany. They forged the victim myth in which Austria was the first victim of Hitler’s and the Reich’s ambitions. They brushed off the fact that the Wehrmacht was met with cheers from the locals as them not wanting to look suspicious and being deported. And since Austria came away with it and didn’t lose anything except them having to be neutral by law (an agreement made with the Allies and the USSR so Austria won’t be split up like Germany and Korea) they never really had to tackle the Nazi issue in their population. Over time this developed into a very Anti-German sentiment up to the point where Austrians consider themselves to be better than Germans because “Hitler became the ‘Führer’ in Germany whilst he didn’t even become an art student in Austria. He would have never made it here.” I remember an interview with a Kickl supporter in which she was asked the question wether she thinks that Kickl or the FPÖ were Nazis and she replied that she doesn’t know what makes you a Nazi since “it was never taught to us” (of course kind of a stupid excuse for being illiterate in history).

4. Similarly to the AfD, the FPÖ has seen that social media is a great propaganda tool. They were arguably the first to use Instagram and YouTube ads and now pump out TikTok propaganda. This propaganda is being consumed by people with no/low critical thinking skills and they then consider themselves politically informed. Even worse the constant emotionalization makes them think (rationally) even less. This is why the FPÖ has slogans like “Your heart says yes” because they don’t want their voters to think with their brain, they just want an emotionalized, radicalized mass that is not questioning what the FPÖ is doing. And they are helped by the tabloids which sadly make the vast majority of Austria’s consumed press. They can be found everywhere since they are “free” and the masses take them and when they are finished they just leave them and so they spread literally everywhere. Now those big tabloids are usually owned by some rich dude or a consortium of rich dudes who think that neoliberalism or even anarcho-capitalism is the way to go (for them). So they are happy to influence their editors to write on topics that suit the AfD’s, FPÖ’s and even ÖVP’s views and in return those parties make economic politics for the upper class. This isn’t really considered corruption since in many cases money doesn’t flow but it is more like a symbiosis.

Tbh they did lose after the whole H.C. Strache scandals got leaked by the German press and German comedian Jan Böhmermann made fun of it on television. Most of those scandals were back in 2019 when H.C. was head of party and vice chancellor and Kickl was the minister of inner affairs. Shortly after the Austrian government collapsed and the FPÖ went into opposition. And now, 5 years later it won with Kickl as head of party.

But yeah, this would be more fitting to some African or South American country than a Central European one. :')

How tf did I get that one wrong. Must have been me writing Kurz one time to much and getting a stroke :')

Thanks for reading my stuff so carefully :3

Source: https://www.diepresse.com/5628349/identitaere-sellner-wollte-mit-christchurch-attentaeter-auf-ein-bier-gehen

Source (translated):

https://www-diepresse-com.translate.goog/5628349/identitaere-sellner-wollte-mit-christchurch-attentaeter-auf-ein-bier-gehen/?_x_tr_sl=de&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp

So, the attacker donated money to the “Identitäre Bewegung” - the same group Kickl called “worth supporting” and the head of the group Sellner wanted to meet the attacker and have a coffee or beer. Something he later brushes off as being thankful for the donation.

My bad for mixing up who donated to whom btw, I should have re-read that info tbh :<

Yes, I fully agree. I phrased myself badly since I should have used “possible” instead of “likely”. My bad >~<

Even tho there is a 3rd way in which the ÖVP kicks Nehammer and the “Brandmauer” (stance against right wing populists) with him and forms a coalition with the FPÖ I agree the Grand coalition (ÖVP & SPÖ) is the more likely option they could get NEOS or Greens into the boat (both would get them a 2/3 majority) but they don’t need to to get a simple majority. As for why it is likely: the ÖVP can stick to their word that a coalition with the FPÖ is out of question and it would be the major party in any non-FPÖ coalition, it could keep Nehammer as a chancellor.

As for the SPÖ they could showcase Babler’s econimically social politics by getting the ministry of health and education (and maybe if they are really good at negotiating the finance, environment or agriculture ministry as well) which could boost their reputation whilst maybe silencing Doskozil.

Further the SPÖ could delegate the hot potato that is migration to the ÖVP and give them the ministry of inner and outer affairs.

Yeah. Too bad the other parties weren’t doing better but there are various reasons:

The people’s party ÖVP is still suffering from their former-former head of party Sebastian Kurz who was extremely popular and the Austrian chancellor for quite a while but who had to resign after a series of corruption charges. The ÖVP then quickly appointed Alexander Schallenberg as their new head and as chancellor but it was clear from the beginning, that he was a puppet. He then had to resign after a meeting in Brussels where “Schallenberg” wanted to tweet something like “So happy to be meeting with (Von der Leyen I think) in Brussels…” but they posted it not on Schallenberg’s twitter account but accidentally on Kurz’ twitter which made it even more clear that Schallenberg was nothing but a puppet. Austria then had a new chancellor AGAIN roughly two weeks after Kurz resigned and is officially led by Karl Nehammer since then. But let’s just say the ÖVP’s reputation has been pretty miserable ever since Kurz left. Even worse they tried to steal voters from the FPÖ by radicalising to the right, legitimising a lot of FPÖ positions.

As for the social democratic SPÖ, it is divided between progressive democratic socialist and current head of party Andreas Babler and conservative social democrat Hans Peter Doskozil. They had been holding a vote for their head of party and it looked like Doskozil had won but they then admitted there had been an issue with an Excel sheet they used to count the votes and that Babler won the vote… In any case it made the SPÖ look like stupid amateurs. Like imagine Bernie Sanders & Joe Biden (but both quite a bit younger) constantly dissing themselves and you get the mess that is the SPÖ.

Edit: I corrected “Kurt Nehammer” to “Karl Nehammer”

A short list of things the FPÖ is famous for:

The party fund scandal when then head of party H.C. Strache used 10 000€ party funds to purchase emeralds in “Clash of Clans” (I wish I made that up but I didn’t).

Trying to strike a deal with a “Russian Oligarch” to purchase Austrias biggest news outlet “Krone” and turn it into a FPÖ propaganda machine. The “Russian Oligarch” was a bait and high ranking FPÖ politicians (like the mentioned H.C. Strache) had to explain themselves and said they were “having drunk fantasies”. It caused the then ÖVP-FPÖ government to collapse.

A song containing the lyrics “Let’s go! (which can also mean Release gas! - I wanted to mention that since it gets lost in translation) We’ll make it 7 million!”. Then minister of inner affairs Herbert Kickl (who is now likely to could become chancellor) reacted not by criticism towards his party, but by criticism towards the “Verfassungsschutz” (Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution) who, according to him, leaked the song. He then ordered a normal police unit, that was meant to arrest drug dealers and gang members, to raid the Verfassungsschutz and they took any evidence for far right extremism linked to the FPÖ.

Now head of party Herbert Kickl is also known for:

Calling the neo nazi group “Identitäre Bewegung” a “project worth supporting”.

Claiming that horse deworming medication could treat covid.

Refering to himself as “Volkskanzler” a title also used by Adolf Hitler.

Saying that “politics should be above the law and that the law should not be above politics”

Having friends that donated money to the Christchurch mass killer and that really wanted to “meet him and drink a coffee if he visits Vienna one day”.

I bet I have forgotten a lot of shit that has been going on. Let’s just say the last few years have been a wild ride in Austrian politics.

Edit: as has been pointed out, Herbert Kickl is not a likely but possible option for chancellor since the ÖVP could form a coalition with the SPÖ and keep Nehammer as chancellor. It was bad wording from my side, I apologize >~<

Looks to me like you want to support a terror group in their fight against a terror group ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯