It is high time that a European, cross-border payment service was established. This should have happened decades ago.

To me, a regulated payment standard like UPI in India seems to make the most sense. But I also find decentralized approaches, such as the GNU Taler, interesting.

Two thing are important, though: This can’t happen fast enough, and under no circumstances should we rely on private companies again.

I have no idea how you can still believe there’s even the slightest chance that the U.S. justice system would deliver justice.

And I wouldn't exactly call it subtle - quite the opposite, in fact: in Germany, for example, politicians step in front of the camera and openly spout Nazi slogans. Just 10 years ago, they would have had to resign for that, and rightly so.

The U.S. has threatened a founding member of NATO with a war of aggression, and furthermore, the U.S. is committing war crimes alongside the genocidal Israel - this is the situation in which the U.S. is calling for support for a war of aggression that tramples on international law. Or to put it another way: It is the situation that a narcissist - who should have been in prison for decades - has brought about with what he calls the "Art of the Deal." GTFO!

Yes, I think so too. It’s pretty obvious, after all: ICE has a budget equivalent to the military spending of a medium-sized country. By U.S. standards: This “agency” has a larger budget than all other U.S. federal agencies combined - that is, the FBI, CIA, etc.

ICE was founded after 9/11 by Bush Jr. At that time, its purpose was essentially to enforce the conservatives’ absurd immigration policies outside the democratic decision-making process.

Today, it is clearly a secret police force that is exclusively loyal to the regime. Of course, this is once again about the self-enrichment of unscrupulous MAGA people, but I think it’s still pretty obvious that the main goal is to field a force that, if necessary, can crush resistance from the military - possibly also from the police, though I don’t think resistance from that side is very likely.

I mean, the Secretary of Education is a wrestling promoter and she’s by no means the only completely unqualified member of the administration. The entire cabinet is like that: from MMA fighters to conspiracy theorists - it’s a grotesque, full-blown clown show.

But hey, it won't be easy to find even halfway decent lawyers for this job anyway, given that working for this attorney general will most likely make you liable to prosecution.

Yes, it is unfortunately becoming increasingly clear that even in the EU, billionaires and their companies are above the law. The legal situation should be clear here and there should be consequences - but there apparently aren't any.

Unfortunately, this applies not only to Twitter, but to most US tech giants in particular, to meta, for example. I have already stopped counting the massive violations of the GDPR that meta and others are constantly committing, because nothing happens anyway. If anything, the fines are so low that violating the law brings these companies far more revenue than it costs them.

So unfortunately, the same major issue that brought the US to the brink of a straight up dictatorship also applies in Europe: even the most blatant violations of the law have no serious consequences for the richest of the rich – and that is why billionaires are becoming more and more powerful.

The situation may be better in the EU for now than in the US, whose legal system obviously no longer even maintains the appearance of fairness, but even in the EU, the enforcement of the law is miles away from anything that could even remotely be called justice.

The reason seems to me to be the same as in the US: concentration of power in a tiny billionaire class that asserts its influence through corruption.

I think that if things continue like this, and I see no indicators that they will not, it will not be long before even the appearance of justice is abandoned in the EU as well.

Edit: Here is an example of how this is possible - it's just plain old corruption, but in the highest ranks of our institutions: From Meta to the EU Parliament: Former chief lobbyist negotiates data protection (German article)

Aura Salla was Meta's chief lobbyist in Brussels for many years. Her task: to convince politicians to weaken EU digital rules such as data protection in order to generate even higher profits with Facebook, WhatsApp, and other platforms.

The prominent hacker Kevin Mitnick, on the other hand, was sentenced to a long prison term, with the judge perhaps slightly overestimating the danger he posed:

Mitnick served five years in prison—four-and-a-half years' pre-trial and eight months in solitary confinement, because, according to Mitnick, law enforcement officials convinced a judge that he had the ability to "start a nuclear war by whistling into a pay phone",[36] implying that law enforcement told the judge that he could somehow dial into the NORAD modem via a payphone from prison and communicate with the modem by whistling to launch nuclear missiles.[37]

Source

If he found out, he would probably say, "Fuč ík" and just go with it.

One can only have the utmost respect for the women's team for not allowing themselves to be politically exploited by a rapist and serious criminal, unlike the men's team.

These women are true role models.

Regardless of their nationality, billionaires largely pursue the same interests in order to strengthen their position of power in the political system in which they are most involved.

This is, of course, a conspiracy theory, but the Epstein files, for example, certainly suggest this - as does the fact that billionaires' companies are all multinational and that it is almost impossible to trace where the incredible amounts of capital in the international economic system actually come from (such as the massive concentrations of capital managed by asset managers like Black Rock).

In short: I suspect that the biggest problem facing people worldwide lies in the power of the respective so-called elites, and I think that they coordinate among themselves in order to remain in power or to expand it further.

This is how I explain the resurgence of Nazi ideology, which is actively promoted by billionaires in very different countries.

Has the Dow fallen enough now for the DOJ to start prosecuting pedophiles?

/s, but in itself almost not, because Bondi apparently was serious about her absurd statement in front of the the House Judiciary Committee.