SociallyIneptWeeb

I know what the meme is supposed to represent, but the Tolkien nerd in me feels the need to correct the universal misunderstanding of the picture used.

Frodo isn’t saying he can’t read the inscription on the One Ring because it’s in Elvish. He actually is pretty fluent in Elvish in the novel, but the inscription on the Ring was in the Black Speech, which he couldn’t recognise.

Did anything I say imply I’m pro-Hamas? Or anti-Jewish? No, I clearly wrote that I’m anti-IDF and anti-Netanyahu government. The government that shortly before the war started was facing massive protests due to its authoritarian policies, and that is rumoured by Israeli citizen to be using the war to distract the public from its aforementioned scandals.

You should also consider the fact that Israeli authorities propped up Hamas as a counterweight to PLO, which they feared would be able to successfully win Palestinian independence. And similarly to how Pakistan propped up the Taliban, now that the radical Islamists got into power, they begun conducting terror attacks on the territory of the country that helped them.

“Do you ever stop to think ‘Are we the baddies?’” says the person unironically supporting a government that calls its civilian victims “animals”

Napoleon, despite the whole “overthrowing republic in favour of monarchy” thing is considered to be one of the main reasons the ideals of the Revolution managed to stick in Europe. Napoleonic Code was a piece of legislation far more progressive than most of that era, and continued to be used in many countries that were subservient to Napoleonic France until the 20th century.

How many thousands civilians oops, pardon, “terrorists” did IDF kill until now exactly? Not a single person in their right mind would complain if IDF targeted only terrorists. But at a certain point, when civilian casualties from the retaliation far outweigh the casualties from the initial attack we need to ask ourselves “What is even the point of this?”

I think more of a Steve Tyler.

Houthi is a name of a tribe, a surname of the tribe’s leader, as well as the name of a movement associated with that tribe.

The Houthi movement is a Shi’a Islamist movement from Yemen (where about 1/3 of the population are Shi’a, and 2/3 Sunni). The movement has been on the opposing side to the Yemeni government in the long Yemeni Civil War.

Allegedly it’s supported by Iran (which Iran officially declined) and it’s mottos include “Death to America” and “Death to Israel”. That should explain roughly why they are causing a stir in the Red Sea region.

You seriously believe in Lamarck? Like, I don’t know, I’m not a native speaker, maybe I’m missing something.

How many fucking times do we have to repeat this: TRAITS ACQUIRED DURING LIFETIME ARE NON-INHERITABLE

If you lose your fingers in an industrial accident, your children aren’t going to be born fingerless, are they?

Giraffes don’t have long necks because one little giraffe long, long ago tried really, really hard to grow a longer neck, but because giraffes who had been born with longer necks could compete better than those without, and pass on their genes. And they got those necks due to mutations.

Environmental pressure selects for benefitial mutations, while the mutations themselves are random. That’s literally the mechanism of evolution through natural selection.

I’m sorry, is this somehow a revelation? “Direct heir” they say… There is a very good chance that “penal colony” is a former Gulag.

A: Read my comment again, it explains what happened, and what can be done to change this.

B: The situation described was under the previous government. They were (for all intents and purposes) the same as Republicans when it came to abortion.

The Polish society at large remains split (unfortunately), and the part that doesn’t want legalisation of abortion is also most politically active in terms of voter mobilisation (i.e. they tend to move their asses on election days) and the moderate right (which is part of the current government) doesn’t want to potentially alienate those voters.

Right now it seems that the best course of action will be a decriminalisation, and a return to the previous status quo: abortion is legal when the life of women is at stake. This would mean that while getting one wouldn’t be illegal, Polish hospitals wouldn’t give you one. Any liberalisation beyond that seems to be an issue for a national referendum, which the moderate right is neutral on (i.e. they would allow one to happen, and would not stop things if liberalisation won)

“The ruling government is admitting they don’t have the money to fund the state media” say the people who carted out the funds from state media.

It’s been two weeks. They’ve been in power for two weeks.

And you have to understand, this isn’t caused by the right-wing passing some law, oh no, no… The Constitutional Court declared abortion unconstitutional. To change this, the new government needs to either change the constitution (requires a massive majority in Parliament), or completely rebuild the current justice system, replacing the CC justices responsible for that ruling (which will take a long time). Any attempt to do it with a simple act will get struck down by the right-wing in just the same way.

That is nothing to say about the fact that about a third of government coalition doesn’t want complete legalisation, only a return to the old “compromise”

EDIT: And they did manage to do a lot in those two weeks so far, it’s not like this is the only thing they promised to do.

Just so we’re all on the same page:

THIS HAPPENED IN JULY.

Just in case anyone wants to pin the blame on the new government.

The controversy is theoretically still ongoing for this case, but on the down low, as just one part of the backlash against the restrictions put on abortions in Poland 3 years ago.

The summary got some things wrong.

It was Polish truck drivers, not farmers. They protested the fact that Ukrainian transport firms were allowed by the EU to operate on the European market without regular restrictions, which, in their opinion, gives Ukrainian drivers an unfair advantage, as not following the regulations allows them to offer lower prices than others.

This protest has been ongoing for a few weeks by now, but there has been no movement from the government, as it has begun in the middle of the post-election transition period, as the ruling coalition changed.

Some interpreted the inaction, as an attempt to dump the responsibility for this mess on the other side of the political divide, and the ability to meet the demands of the protesters is seen as an important test for the new coalition, especially in context of the Ukraine-Russia war.

Domestically, most agree that the interests of the domestic industry should be prioritised, but shouldn’t be allowed to compromise the security situation of Ukraine, since they are fighting Russia, seen as the biggest geopolitical threat to Poland.

So the entire thing will be a delicate balancing act, of accounting for the well-being of domestic enterprises, the strategic and diplomatic interests of the state (i.e. helping Ukraine kick Russia’s teeth in), and taking care of the problem as quickly as possible.

For context, the demands of Polish drivers include returning to the previous system of permissions and an audit of Ukrainian transport companies created after the escalation of conflict, however they do not want restrictions on transport of humanitarian aid and army supplies for Ukraine.

Italy?

I wonder if that might get the Catholics to condemn Israeli war crimes?

Not related, but I like your username sera.

People cried watching them. Seriously.

Some stuff was obviously done with sticks and scotch tape so to say, since the takeover was very chaotic, the new team didn’t really have much resources. But it seems a lot of lower level people have been retained.

The first segment was about the takeover itself, and while it kinda reeked of propaganda, after they’ve shown the government’s justification for the whole thing, they brought up the President’s response. And he is from Law and Justice, the previous team. This is what made people cry, since for the first time in 8 years you could hear the opposition voices in state media.

It only got better from there with the budget, where every party got a moment, and the sentencing of those two MPs I’ve mentioned in main comment.

Overall rather bland, but most people say that’s what public media should be like - bland and including every side involved.

Of course, it doesn’t mean that every view should be acceptable, but they should be inclusive, even to those with fringe views.

For a bit more context:

Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość - PiS) has illegally taken control of state media back in 2016. Normally the chairs and boards of state media are managed by the National Council of Radio and Television (Krajowa Rada Radiofonii i Telewizji - KRRiT). This is a constitutional provision, and members of the Council have terms. So PiS passed a law that moved these competences to a new body, that they created. That law was declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court (Trybunał Konstytucyjny - TK), which normally would mean the end of the story, so what did PiS do?

They ignored the courts.

New leadership of the state TV got an increase in funding and set to work turning it into a propaganda tube for the party. Most of old presenters left in protest, but that didn’t deter the people in charge. For the past 8 years, the formerly decently impartial state TV, that used to report on government corruption and scandals, became an unceasing stream of adoration for “the greatest government in history, that valiantly fights for the betterment of Poles”. People compared the primitive propaganda of the past 8 years to that of Best Korea (to the point that you should be able to find on YouTube DPRK’s propaganda videos with audio from Polish state TV replacing the original audio)

So when the right wing populist government finally “fell off a bike”, as we say in Poland, the priority of the new team was to undo the clusterfuck that were state media.

Yesterday (20th of December) at 11:00, Minister of Culture and National Heritage, Bartłomiej Sienkiewicz, decreed, based on the Code of Trading Companies (which governs regular companies as well as state enterprises), that the chairs and boards of Polish Television, Polish Radio and Polish Press Agency (all state owned) were fired, and who would be their replacements.

18 minutes later, the news channel TVP Info stopped broadcasting, and it’s signal was replaced with TVP 1. Over the next hours the new leader of state TV arrived at its headquarters and slowly but surely, the new team took back the media, including the social media accounts of the state TV. Last holdouts included Twitter/X.

Obviously we were all following this with bated breath, including the ad hoc protest of around 200 people in defence of “independent media”, and “constitutional order” i.e. screaming that it’s not fair that the old team doesn’t get to keep spewing propaganda for our tax money.

At 19:30 instead of regular news segment, old (pre-2016) presenter came on air and said that everyone deserves to have actual news instead of propaganda in the state TV that they paid for, and that the news segment will return tomorrow (in other words today - 21st of December).

I can assure you, that for the first time in 8 years thousands, if not millions of Poles, will turn on the state TV.

For some additional things:

There was a vote about a motion to “depoliticise the state media” in Parliament. Law and Justice MPs didn’t take part in the vote because… They went to state TV to protest the changes (when reporting on that, the state TV, at the time still loyal, covered the number of MPs who voted against)

Two PiS MPs were declared guilty in a 6-year long trial that same day. They automatically lost their mandates for this, and instead of going to the Police… They also went to the state TV headquarters. The Police followed them, which prompted cries of “police brutality” from the protesters (ironic, considering they were the ones who used police brutality just a few months earlier).

A presenter from TVP hijacked a farming news segment to rant about the takeover, until the power was cut off, ending his rant mid-sentence.

Former TVP employees went to a private right-wing news to hold their own news segment at 19:30, lulz were had.

That’s about it.

EDIT: some spelling mistakes

Law and Justice are more like Brezhnev era Communists than fascists. Racism isn’t really part of their agenda.

Confederation though, are honest to God Fascists.

Aaahhhh…

Unternehmen Hannibal, good times.