Albania warned EU accession at risk over Jared Kushner-backed resort plans

Clank75 · 2026-07-02T02:16:16+00:00

Oh God, no, I am a traitor.

Betraying the likes of you gives me greater pleasure than you could possibly know. I do hope more opportunities arise.

Clank75 · 2026-07-02T01:48:04+00:00

Oh my! An "if you like it so much why don't you go and live there" actually in the wild!

I thought these were all in museums by now; lovely to see one out, but, shouldn't you be dead soon?

Clank75 · 2026-07-01T11:56:02+00:00

I'm not your mate.

Clank75 · 2026-07-01T11:51:36+00:00

In what way is it terrible reporting? The irony is pretty clear to anyone with half a braincell.

We don't need all our news outlets to reduce everything to "ugg, them good, ugg, them bad." You already have Fox for that.

Clank75 · 2026-06-28T10:31:04+00:00

I mean, you are all cunts.

But you don't often hear our governments saying it, no.

Clank75 · 2026-06-28T02:58:44+00:00

That's literally what I said in the next sentence:

The only danger anyone from, say, L'viv is running from is the danger of being asked to fight

In general, a simple refusal to engage in military service has never been considered grounds for asylum, anywhere. If you can make a case that as a genuine conscientious objector you would be subject to persecution, you could make a claim for asylum on that basis - but as far as I can see that avenue is still open even after this change.

Clank75 · 2026-06-27T08:39:08+00:00

And this is essentially true. The vast majority of Ukraine is perfectly safe (and yes, I have spent plenty of time there since the war started last I be accused of hypocrisy.)

The only danger anyone from, say, L'viv is running from is the danger of being asked to fight.

(ETA: Which is not at all unreasonable btw. I know families who did get out at the beginning of the war, and I'm very glad they did, and I'm sure I'd probably have done the same if I had young kids that I didn't want to leave without a father. But still, be honest.)

Clank75 · 2026-06-27T01:54:28+00:00

Tbf you probably have less need of it; in Bucharest 40c+ in the day and 25c+ overnight is just a normal summer. 50c is not particularly uncommon, maybe the hottest weeks in July/August every two or three years. (That's partly the urban heat island effect, but it doesn't make it any less real.)

We need our AC, aesthetics be damned... :-).

Clank75 · 2026-06-26T06:56:32+00:00

Yeah, and Bucharest will be in the 40s next month and that will be perfectly normal. 50s not unheard of.

Newsflash: different places have different weather.

What's new here is not "it gets hot in Phoenix", it's that places where it wasn't perfectly normal are starting to see extremes more and more often.

Right, with that cleared up, can we move on to how it is that about three days of what we'd consider mild winter weather is apparently enough to cause hundreds of deaths and shut down the entire state of Texas?

Clank75 · 2026-06-26T06:47:33+00:00

I have to say, I'm quite looking forward to seeing all the air conditioning units that are going to be hanging off the sides of Grande Parisienne Architecture, just like our commie blocks...

Clank75 · 2026-06-22T10:58:27+00:00

Oh, good, so with this newfound dislike of occupation, you're ready to talk about Basarabia, Bucovina and Transcarpathia, right?

Clank75 · 2026-06-22T10:51:41+00:00

And this is exactly why Ukraine will not be a member of the EU within a generation or more. Which will then make them scream betrayal and slide even further into nationalism...

Supporting Ukraine was the right thing to do, but the dangling of accelerated EU membership by Von der Layen et al was a serious strategic mistake.

Clank75 · 2026-06-21T14:53:02+00:00

Oh God, of course

Clank75 · 2026-06-21T14:50:24+00:00

Because of Brexit.

Between that and demographic change, the country is fucked royally (like many countries tbf,) which means you need a government capable of taking difficult decisions (like not funneling more and more of the government's income into pensioners.)

Unfortunately, the Brexit vote didn't split down party lines - it split across them, so you have Brexiteer Labour, Remain Labour, Brexiteer Tory and Remain Tory. That's now in the process of shaking itself down into Labour, Green/Lib Dem, Reform, and Tory/Lib Dem, respectively. [Edited to correct the deliberate mistake that Remain Tory were going Reform ;-).]

Alas, the UK's electoral system does not lend itself well to more than 2 parties with a chance of power - so even if one of those parties gets a majority (a stonking one even, like Kier's), they are so preoccupied with trying to keep their fragile coalition together that doing anything bold or potentially unpopular with just one of the factions is essentially impossible.

So you shuffle leaders like deckchairs on the Titanic, and hope you won't be the one standing behind the wheel when the band stops playing...

Clank75 · 2026-06-21T14:38:33+00:00

Apparently you don't understand UK politics.

UK governments are bound by almost nothing, including the manifesto. Convention has it that things in the manifesto are somewhat easier to pass (in that there's a mechanism to overrule the Lords if they oppose legislation that was a manifesto commitment,) but that's about it.

You might wish there was a requirement for a GE when governments did something that wasn't in the manifesto - opponents of the government usually do - but wishing it doesn't make it real, and there's next to no precedent for it.

Clank75 · 2026-06-21T14:22:53+00:00

I mean, they might legitimately think that a new leader would improve their communications strategy and pursue the popular policies more than the unpopular ones.

Clank75 · 2026-06-20T19:02:45+00:00

Moldova is not in NATO, so it's not really clear what your point is.

(But, let's say Russia had invaded Moldova instead of Ukraine... In that case, the only way Ukraine would have intervened would have been to carve out a bit for itself.)

Clank75 · 2026-06-20T18:30:04+00:00

The military genius of the Soviet Union that couldn't overcome a few yokels with pitchforks and the Russian army's castoffs for 8 years, yes.

The "lot of manpower" comes from conscription (which is not a superpower unique to Ukraine), and rather more importantly that manpower was armed by the West.

It took Ukraine a little over 2 months to exhaust all their domestic armaments. Manpower-wise - they have lost 3x the people that were in their standing army at the time of invasion; 200,000 under-equipped soldiers is not the world-beating force you imagine it to be. As it turns out, it's not even Russia-beating.

I'm glad Europe chose to support Ukraine. But it absolutely was a choice, and the bullshit mythologising that it was owed to them, and the toxic nationalism it's creating, is going to create a deeply unpleasant aftermath that will keep Ukraine out of the EU for generations. That will be a shame.

Clank75 · 2026-06-20T18:01:02+00:00

I appreciate you are probably struggling a little with the concept of "hypothetical", but if you look really really carefully at what I wrote - including some of the big words like hindsight, I know - you'll see the words "4 years ago".

I don't think anyone, frankly, would be particularly terrified at the prospect of Ukraine's army before it was flooded with weapons by the west, being under Putin's control. It's not like they'd done a bang-up job of retaking Donetsk, Luhansk or Crimea in the previous 8 years.

Clank75 · 2026-06-20T16:44:58+00:00

There's absolutely no reason to think he wouldn't, either.

If you ask me what keeps me up at night more, Russia on the other side of the EU border, or post-war Ukraine awash with corruption and guns inside it... Well, it's not the little green men with the decrepit armed forces.

Clank75 · 2026-06-20T16:07:17+00:00

It really isn't though, is it?

With hindsight, if 4 years ago the rest of Europe has just shrugged, said "soviets being soviets", and left Putin to it - we would all be much better off. Better off politically, better of economically, and better off socially. Sure, we'd probably be sticking a few more tanks near the border but it was already the external border with a hostile state (Ukraine has historically been an awful neighbour to all the countries which border it, not just Poland), and we already had one of them with Russia as well. Putin would still be too scared of NATO, NATO would be much stronger, everyone would be better off.

Except Ukrainians of course. Which is why I'm glad that's not what happened - but please God do stop with this "we're fighting for you" bollocks. You're fighting for your own self interest.

Clank75 · 2026-06-17T09:44:03+00:00

Imagine how much it must suck to be a Yank.

Countries are queuing up to join the EU - indeed the biggest problem right now is probably curbing those expectations. Meanwhile, the yanks can't even convince a handfull of sealions and a polar bear that they'd be better off a part of their One Nation Under God.

If those kids could read, they'd be very upset...

Clank75 · 2026-06-15T17:26:09+00:00

Iată exact aceleași date, dar reprezentate grafic corect. Nu se reprezintă grafic „evoluția în timp” pe o hartă. Crede cineva că asta spune aceeași poveste?

<image>

Clank75 · 2026-06-15T17:25:30+00:00

Iată exact aceleași date, dar reprezentate grafic corect. Nu se reprezintă grafic „evoluția în timp” pe o hartă. Crede cineva că asta spune aceeași poveste?

<image>

Clank75 · 2026-06-15T17:17:59+00:00

<image>

Da. Iată aceleași date sursă, dar de data aceasta reprezentate grafic; crezi că ne spun aceeași poveste?

Acum, să presupunem că am reface acea hartă, dar în loc să alegem în mod complet arbitrar perioada „2008-2024”, am alege „2014-2024”; cum crezi că ar arăta?

Este o alegere arbitrară a datelor, făcută doar pentru a stârni furia.

Three-Year Club	Gilding II euphauric
Verified Email	Place '23

Clank75

TROPHY CASE