So much this. In my country my parents generation could afford buying a house on two middle class incomes when they were end of 20s early 30s. In my generation that is only possible with generational wealth.

I am from Germany. I am used to people pulling crazy reckless maneuvers in their BMW, Mercedes, Audi or now Teslas too. But they pull this shit at 220 kph, so any slight miscalculation and you get half a dozen people killed.

How about not creating dangerous and potentially deadly situations in traffic, no matter how much we disdain the cars brand or think the other driver is an asshole?

You cut off the Tesla, the Tesla breaks, the car behind crashes and the whole thing might turn into a mass accident with dozens of injuries and some people killed…

The British were heavily involved in slave trade. They built the whole inudstry of the american colonies around bringing slaves there, selling the product in Britain and then selling some British stuff to the slavers in Africa to buy more slaves. They royal fanily derived a lot of its wealth from slave trade.

An explosion sparks theories. The author had fun with the headline

https://xcancel.com/Volker_Beck/status/1867482839488385329#m

“Israel will not withdraw from all of Gaza. Otherwise 7th of october would be repeated in the time to come”

So he demands an indefinite occupation, which utlimately means annexation, in particular as Israeli settler terrorists as well as government ministers are making plans for settling in Gaza.

Thank you for that twitter workaround link.

As for weapons deliveries another 100 million € worth have been approved since August and are currently in delivery or in part have arrived already.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/germany-approves-over-100-million-in-arms-exports-to-israel-angering-rights-groups/

As current information indicates radical hate of all religions and insane claims of German police furthering the “islamization” of Germany.

Going by the stuff the suspect wrote on his twitter it seems stochastic terrorism from the far right worked once again. Just that this time the victims aren’t brown, queer or jewish, but “normal” (by the far rights idea) Germans.

On Monday the spokesmen of the foreign ministry of Germany said, that Israel is acting to defend “legitimate security interests” in Syria and that these would also align with the interests of the Syrians. Therefore these interests would have to be considered in balancing it with international law…

Again the inaction and defense of blatant crimes committed by Israel is motivating them to continue and escalate these. The US, UK, Germany and others are highly complicit in furthering them.

All state who are members of the ICC accords are legally obliged to execute arrest warrants if a suspected war criminal is stepping into their territory.

So if Netanyahu was to set foot onto Poland the Polish government would be obliged to make the Polish police arrest Netanyahu and then send him to The-Hague. Same would go for Putin, but i am not sure if the Polish government would manage to capture him alive if he was to set foot there.

They have been getting traction consistently and German politics moved significantly to the right over the past years. Now supposedly progressive parties like the social democrats and greens spout stuff that five years ago was exclusive to the AfD and maybe the fringes of the Bavarian CSU.

Even if they don’t govern they get their way more and more, which helps normalising their positions more and more, which gives them more and more votes.

Buying governments really pays off it seems.

The same shit happens in systems with more than two parties. You also have the problem to think about rallying behind the main party on the left or right side vs. one that is closer to your ideals but probably wont become part of the government coalition. In Germany, where i am from, we had 12 out of 16 years under Merkel with a “big coalition” of the conservative CDU and the social democrat SPD. All that happened was the SPD moving more and more to the right. Now we had a coalition that was supposedly progressive but collapsed hard as well as the Green party and liberal party FDP also moving strongly to the right. We now in 2024 have policies among the supposed center/center-left that used to be fringe far right by German standards. This is why voting “tactically” or for “the lesser evil” fails. It gives a false sense of what is demanded by the people.

Also for the narrative control just take the win of Biden in 2020 as a counter example. Despite Trump holding office the Dems managed to win.

Well, they would get my vote if they changed their policies and behaviour. If you vote them no matter what they dont have to fight for it. (Note i am not a US citizen but the same principles apply. I have similar dissapointment with the formerly progressive parties in my country moving to the right)

And we can also observe this empirically with the current election. The Dems were so tone deaf that they thought to compete over Reps not too happy with Trump, fielding people like Dick fucking Cheney as their advocates. Meanwhile they lost a lot of votes they expected to just have secure because they expected the voters to be blindly loyal hence irrelevant to their strategy.

I like to think of it in a “market” way. By voting there is a signal into the market, that their is a demand for a certain political direction. So “stocks” with that profile increase in value. This might be individual politicians, specific laws, parties, or general ideology/values.

Politicians want their portfolio to be attractive, so they get more votes. As a result they will adjust their portfolio of political positions accordingly.

If you vote “tactically” you send a false signal into the market. So instead of getting more politicians to represent the ideas you like, you reinforce them in the ideas you don’t like, as that had more buy signals. On the flip side if you send your sell signal, by removing a formally loyal vote from them, you can show them that their portfolio has gotten lopsided.

The difficulty is to think these things longer term. It is not just this election cycle, but 8 years, 12 years maybe even 20 years ahead. The way media and politicians like to represent elections got more and more pointed towards just this single one being the one and only. This is not just a problem in the US, but also countries without FPTP. Also the reporting got less about the specific policies and more about the how and who, turning it into a show of game of thrones, rather than a fight for the best ideas.

All you do by consistently voting the “lesser of two evils” is kicking the hangover down the road by keeping to drink more alcohol. You know every time that it will get worse and the sooner you get through the hangover, the sooner you could actually move on, but in fear of the hangover you grab the bottler another time.

With the measures you mentioned the problem is in particular that the current Democrats are not caring about them. They assume they will get the votes nonetheless and if they don’t it is fine because the Republicans will cover most of the donors interests anyways. Making noise only works, if it is followed by consequences. Leaving political violence aside, the only consequence a normal person can realize is not giving the vote.

This is a lie spread by corporate elites that want to make sure both parties align with their interests instead of having Democrats create a popular platform and win on that basis.

Did you learn nothing from hanging on to Biden until even the billionaire donors got scared by his dementia?

Voting for non evil is the way to go. By keeping to vote for the lesser evil, you get it to become more evil while keeping non evil out of power. This is how the system games you.

So if you don’t vote for the lesser evil it gets salty and joins the evil? Yeah i am not voting for that psycho manipulating abusive shit.

A soldier hiding in a bush is a combatant. The grenade in his hand is a weapon. It is easily discernible as such both by other soldiers and by civilians. And both soldiers and civilians will expect a grenade to explode when it is thrown at them, or at least they understand the risk of a grenade potentially exploding, if it is laying around. So they expect it to be explosive.

Lets go through the definition word for word again:

“Booby-trap” means any device or material which is designed, constructed, or adapted to kill or injure, and which functions unexpectedly when a person disturbs or approaches an apparently harmless object or performs an apparently safe act.

any device

A soldier is not a device, a grenade is, a scooter is

or material

A soldier is not a material, a grenade is not a material, but made from some, same for a scooter

which is designed, constructed, or adapted

A soldier is not designed, a grenade is and this specific scooter was

to kill or injure

all three kill or injure

and which functions

all three function

unexpectedly

A soldier is expected to be a danger, so is a grenade, a scooter is not

when

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/when
at what time; at the time at which:

a person

the guy assassinated is a person. It does not say civilian or combatant. Any human being counts

disturbs or approaches

he moved into the explosion range, so he approached

an apparently harmless object

a soldier is not a harmless object. a grenade is not a harmless object. A scooter normally and by the expectation of normal circumstances is a harmless object

or performs an apparently safe act

this means an interaction with the device itself that should be safe. E.g. if you set fire to a gas bottle as a civilian you cannot expect it not to explode

Nowhere does it say that the device or material needs to have any sort of automation. Nowhere does it say, that a remote trigger is excepted. Nowhere does it say, that it must be targeting combatants or civilians, both go equally.

I provided specific definitions from the Geneva convention. If you think the Geneva convention is trolling or some scheme deviced by Russia i can’t help you.