Europe

Dialogue with green groups results in agreement on ‘urgent, ambitious and feasible’ reforms in agriculture

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The journalists spoke witih Chinese students in Amsterdam.

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When men go to pee in a public toilet they spend a minute gazing at the wall in front of them, in what many advertisers have seized upon as an opportunity to put up posters of their products above the stinking urinals.

But in terms of framing, you'd better ask yourself: is this really what I want my brand to be associated with?

You might well think twice if you were selling ice cream or toothpaste, so what if your poster was Ursula von der Leyen's face selling EU values?

Because that's the kind of environment in which the European Commission president, other top EU officials, and national EU leaders are posting their images and comments every day when they use X to communicate with press and the EU public.

Even the toilet analogy is too kind.

There was already lots of toxic crap on X before the summer of 2024.

**Racist, antisemitic, and homophobic content had "surged", according to a January study by US universities. **

**X had more Russian propaganda than any other big social media, an EU report warned in 2023. **

**Porn was 13 percent of X in late 2022, according to internal documents seen by Reuters. **

But this summer, with the failed assassination of Donald Trump in the US and the UK race riots, X's CEO Elon Musk turbocharged his platform into an overflowing sewer of bigotry, nihilism, and greed.

As I tried to follow the UK riots from Brussels using X, time and again, I saw von der Leyen's carefully-coiffed Christian Democrat torso issuing some polite EU statement, while sandwiched on my laptop screen between video-clips getting off on anti-migrant violence, pro-Russian bots, and OnlyFans links.

Musk's algorithms pushed pro-riot content so hard down users' throats it prompted a transatlantic UK government rebuke and talk of legal sanctions.

Tommy Robinson, a leading British racist, got over 430 million views for his X posts, for instance.

Andrew Tate, Britain's top misogynist, got 15 million views for one X post inciting rioters.

And the biggest turd in the cesspit - Musk's own avatar - also kept appearing next to von der Leyen and other EU leaders on my screen, as the US tech baron ranted about "civil war" in the UK, pushed pro-Trump conspiracy theories, or told EU commissioner Thierry Breton to "literally fuck your own face".

Musk's summer coincided with France's arrest of a Russian tech CEO, Pavel Durov, in August on suspicion he condoned the sale of child pornography and drugs on his Telegram platform.

The European Commission also started legal proceedings against X in July over misleading and illegal content, in a process that could see Musk fined hundreds of millions of euros.

But aside from the grand issues of how to regulate social media without stymying free speech or privacy, EU leaders could do something a lot simpler and closer to home for the sake of public mental health - just switch to any other less sleazy platform instead.

You could do it tomorrow with one email to your tech staff and for all the stupid content on Instagram, for example, at least your face won't keep flashing up next to racist glee and naked tits on your constituents' screens.

Von der Leyen has 1.5 million X followers, French president Emmanuel Macron has 9.8 million, while Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez and Polish prime minister Donald Tusk have 1.9 million each.

EU leaders could also do something a lot simpler and closer to home for the sake of public mental health - just switch to any other less sleazy platform instead

But please don't worry, not all journalists or the general public are that dumb yet, most of us will find you and follow you because politics is genuinely important.

And we will thank you for giving us one more reason to get off X ourselves, because so long as you use it as your main outlet for news updates you are dragging us along with you.

My initial analogy of advertising in a public toilet was designed to show the importance of semiotics in political PR - it matters where you speak, not just what you say.

The analogy also holds good for those who worry that if normal leaders and media abandoned toxic platforms, then extremism would grow in its own exclusive online world.

It's just good public hygiene to bury our sewage pipes, instead of letting people empty their buckets out of the window onto our heads.

But if you prefer to hold your nose and stay on X, consider also that you are damaging not just your own brand but also causing financial and political harm in real life.

Financial hurt, because if you help make people reliant on X for news, then greater use of Musk's platform makes people like him, Robinson, and Tate ever richer via X's monetisation schemes for viral content.

Political injury, because to the extent that von der Leyen, Macron, or Sánchez possess real importance, they help to aggrandise Musk, Tate, and Robinson by continuously appearing alongside them in X's hyper-curated online space.

And so if you should worry that urinals below your face might put people off, then the situation is actually worse than that.

Your presence on X is also helping to pay for the muck to flow and the toilet owner is using you to sell it to the world.

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Hungary batting for the other side on Ukraine, Estonia foreign minister says

Viktor Orban's Hungary is not aligned with the majority of western countries on Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine, and could even be said to be siding with the opposing camp, Minister of Foreign Affairs Margus Tsahkna has conceded.

Speaking to ETV show "Välisilm" on Monday evening, the minister said: "Unfortunately, it is really the case that Orban has started 'batting for the opposing team' on this particular matter."

"I think he is speaking to his own voters in Hungary, and so is far removed from what we have agreed upon in Europe," Tsahkna added.

As to the EU's limited ability to act against Hungary, given that it currently holds the EU presidency, the minister responded, "There is still something we can do."

"The EU Treaty's Article 7 procedure has been initiated, which may result in the suspension of a member state's voting rights."

"I am certainly not optimistic on this though, because it requires the consent of all 26 other member states, though at least we want right now to to create a situation in the near future whereby 21 countries can move forward with this process."

Romania changed its choice for Commissioner in response to calls by von der Leyen for gender parity in the next cabinet. Bucharest is vying for an economic portfolio and has nominated a former minister for EU funds and secretary of state for public procurement, newly-elected MEP Roxana Mînzatu.

Brussels is waiting for Hungary to pay €200 million and lift its long-standing restrictions on the right to asylum.

More and more people are using this form of travel to get around the continent, using high-speed routes and a network of night trains that continues to expand. We traveled from Madrid to Prague and witnessed how the future of European transportation is clean and fast

Addition for the study: Empowering farmers in Central Europe: the case for agri-PV -- (archived link)

Deploying solar panels and growing crops on the same land could be a solution to boost renewable electricity in Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, reaching the equivalent of 68% of today’s energy demand in the countries, according to new research.

A study by energy think tank Ember posits that combining electricity and crop production, a practice dubbed agri-PV, on just 9% of farmland could meet the electricity needs of agriculture and food processing in the region.

The UK-based NGO suggests that 180GW of solar panels could be installed on crops across the central European countries – triple the targeted capacity by 2030 set out in draft national energy plans, and seven times more than the total installed capacity across the countries at present.

Boasting 19% of the EU’s arable land, the so-called Visegrad 4 countries produce a disproportionately large amount of staple crops such as wheat, oats and rye, production that Ember notes could be imperiled by volatile fertilizer prices, recurrent droughts and extreme weather events.

Danish Minister of Justice Peter Hummelgaard said [...] social media - naming Telegram and TikTok - were widely used to facilitate crime and that if it was up to him alone, some communication platforms would be geoblocked and shut down.

A TikTok spokesperson for the Nordics said the company had no comment on the ministers' statement but added it was looking forward to working with the governments on the issue.

Telegram said that it abided by the EU's Digital Service Act and that recruitment for illegal acts was forbidden on the platform.

Meta and X did not immediately reply to requests for comment.

TikTok owner ByteDance has added French telecom billionaire Xavier Niel to its board. His addition follows the departure of Coatue Management founder Philippe Laffont from the ByteDance board. Besides newly added director Niel, ByteDance’s board currently consists of Neil Shen of Hongshan Capital, William E. Ford of General Atlantic, Arthur Dantchik from Susquehanna International Group, and ByteDance’s chief executive Liang Rubo, its official website shows.

Unlike other board members who represent major investors in ByteDance, Niel doesn’t own any stakes in the privately held company, according to tech outlet The Information. An earlier report from the outlet mentioned that Coatue is considering selling its stake in ByteDance, worth billions of dollars, due to the stalled IPO

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/41304465

"History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes"

The Alternative for Germany (AfD) is the first far-right party to win a state election in Germany since the Second World War, giving it unprecedented power, even if other parties are sure to exclude it.

Voters in two closely watched elections in the former communist east made their dissatisfaction with Germany's mainstream political parties clear, putting the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party in the top spot in Thuringia, with 32.8% of the vote, and second place in Saxony, with 30.7%, according to final results.

The leader of the AfD in Thuringia, Hoecke is one of Germany's most controversial far-right politicians and was fined twice this year for deliberately using a banned Nazi slogan.

The upcoming government formations will probably take a long time, and the outcome is completely uncertain.

Edit:
While I understand the source for data displayed is important, it’s a bit random in this case, but here:

• Invasion of Poland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Poland
• Election results in Thüringen Germany showing the AfD as the winner: https://www.bundeswahlleiterin.de/en/europawahlen/2024/ergebnisse/bund-99/land-16.html
• The calculation between the two dates has to be done by yourself. ;)

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Investigators have identified dozens of Russian soldiers who where captured during Ukraine's incursion in Russia. The soldiers’ parents said they haven’t received any information from the Russian Defense Ministry about their children’s possible whereabouts.

However, the parents have gotten messages from pro-war activists and bloggers — referring to themselves as “volunteer helpers” — who told the parents not to speak out publicly about the deaths, capture, or disappearances of their loved ones to avoid “playing into” Ukraine’s hands and provoking conflict with the Russian authorities.

One of these “helpers” is an activist named Svetlana Zarutskaya, who runs a chat group for a military unit. She has advised parents “not to talk with Ukes” and to contact the Federal Security Service (FSB) if anybody tries to help them find their sons.

In a conversation recorded by the mother of a missing conscript, Zarutskaya said the following:

There were conscripts stationed on our border in 1941, and our conscripts fought in Afghanistan and Chechnya! When they took their oath, they pledged allegiance to the Motherland. […] The Ukes are pushing the narrative that we’re at fault for posting the conscripts [on the border]. There’s been a major propaganda campaign aimed at turning Russian citizens against their government and against their state. But it’s important to understand: it was the Ukes who crossed our border and took the conscripts captive, and even killed some of them. And we, the Russian army, didn’t cross their borders. We haven’t crossed the new Ukrainian border anywhere.

Some of the missing conscripts’ relatives said they’ve reached out to Russian propagandists for help publicizing their situation but that everyone they contacted was afraid to help [...] Among these figures were

• Komsomolskaya Pravda correspondent Alexander Kots;
• blogger Semyon Pegov, who runs the popular WarGonzo Telegram channel;
• state media “war correspondent” Yevgeny Poddubny;
• Izvestia correspondent Emil Timashev;
• blogger Yury Podolyak; and reporters for the Yekaterinburg-based state news site Ura.ru.

The Ura.ru employees cited Russia’s law against spreading “disinformation” about the military. Propagandist Anastasia Kashevarova, meanwhile, promised the missing conscripts’ parents that she would help State Duma deputy Shamsail Saraliyev compile a prisoner exchange list, but she then went on to blame the conscripts themselves for allowing Ukrainian troops to cross the border:

Serving at the border in a country at war, they were completely relaxed — wearing civilian clothes and with no weapons. Look at the photos and videos of soldiers captured in the SVO (special military operation) zone: those guys are shell-shocked, dirty, and wounded, and it’s clear that they fought to the end. Compare them with the images of those captured in the Kursk region: some of them are wearing slippers, some are in civilian clothing, all of them look clean. [...] Surrendering without a fight, out of negligence, while drunk — it’s [tantamount to] working for the enemy.